At the birth of the Vodňany Gallery there was a liberal gift from Dr. Blahornír Žahour to his native town. In 1966 he visited a local museum and this event supported his decision to provide his own possessions to establish a new town gallery. That was a collection of paintings gathered by Dr. Žahour and his wife during all their life. The gift contained about 150 paintings mostly by the Czech artists who lived and worked at the end of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century. In this collection you can find works by Oldřich Blažíček, Václav Brožík, Ota Bubeníček, Jan Dědina, František Elhenický, Antonín Hudeček, Alois Kalvoda, František Kaván, Otakar Lebeda, Gustav Macoun, Alois Moravec, Jaroslav Panuška, Vojtěch Sedláček, Václav Špála, Joža Úprka, František Ženíšek, Jan Zrzavý and some others. How time was passing the basic collection of the gallery has been completed particularly with the works of the Czech artists from the South-Bohemian region. For example there could be mentioned Vaclav Štětka, Jan Kojan and Ota Matoušek.
The fund of the gallery was also completed with 44 drawings by Mikoláš Aleš which were created for the decoration of Vodňany church and school in Protivín between 1895 - 1902.
In 2 exposition halls there are the Memorial Halls of the writers František Herites and Julius Zeyer.
The Gallery was first opened for public at Christmas in 1967 as an integral part of The Town Museum. At the beginning the Gallery was named after its founders. In April 1968 there was a big fire that destroyed a part of the Town Hall. The newly reconstructed Gallery was reopened on 8th June 1969. There have been regular exhibitions of the Czech and local artists since 1973.
The money for the purchases of the new collection items are provided from the Fund of LLD. Zdeněk Novák and his wife, which was established in 1992.