The Arnot Art Gallery opened in 1913 through the testimony bequest of Matthias H. Arnot, an Elmira businessman and philanthropist. Mr. Arnot willed to the community his 1833 Greek Revival home and collection of seventeenth- through nineteenth-century European paintings; nineteeth-century American and European sculptures; and Egyptian and Greek artifacts. It is one of the last existing private collections still housed intact in its original showcase and provides the nucleus of the Museum's Permanent Collection. The Museum also holds nineteenth-and twentieth-century American artwork and a growing group of contemporary representational paintings.

In 1970 the institution was renamed the Arnot Art Museum, recognizing its growth in stature as well as the greater importance and permanence of a museum. It was noted at the time that the term "Museum" implies a public, educational institution in contrast to the more private sense of the word "gallery." The permanent collection, now over 2000 works, includes over 100 important European paintings, as well as American and European sculptures in marble and bronze, and a growing collection of contemporary realist representational paintings. The Museum revised its Mission in 1992 to include a "primary focus" on representational art. It began the serial exhibitions entitled Re-presenting Representation in 1993 and now holds an acclaimed collection of contemporary drawings, paintings and sculptures.

“A talent for any art is rare, but it is given to nearly every one to cultivate a taste for art; only it must be cultivated in earnestness.  The more things thou learnest to know and to enjoy, the more complete and full will be, for thee, the delight of living.” 
   Plato, quoted by Matthias H. Arnot