The Art Fund of the USSR was an organization developed with financial support of the state and with the Artists’ Union of the USSR. The Artists’ Union of the USSR administered the Art Fund of the USSR in addition to managing the Board of Exhibitions, the Central Educational and Experimental Workshop, the Propaganda Poster Agency, and the Sovetskii Khudozhnik Publishing House. Via decree, wages paid to union artists and designers included payments to the Art Fund of the USSR. The amount and means of fees to the Art Fund were established at the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR in February 1940.

In each USSR republic there was an Art Section composed of collections, often for sale, that came from the Art Fund of the USSR of Moscow in addition to a fund in the constitute republic. For example, the Art Fund of the Uzbek Republic was comprised of the principle and circulating capital allotted by the Art Fund of the USSR from profits and from monthly dues of Artist’s Union members. The fund was also responsible for building Houses of Recreation and Artistic Work in the Soviet republics and, it worked with regional factories to produce murals, paintings and other art for public display and for revolving exhibitions.