The article is devoted to the issues of the history of acquisition of Imperial Agricultural Museum that existed in St. Petersburg in 1859-1952. The Agricultural Museum was a large educational center and cultural attraction. Its creation is connected with the formation of a whole direction of museum development in the second half of the XIX-early XX century - the emergence during the reforms of Emperor Alexander II of a number of practice-oriented museums, where the main directions of museum work, including acquisition, were subordinated to the current needs of society.