The Ethnographic Museum is located in a remarkable Secession building, built around 1903, that once used to seat the Crafts Hall. It was established in 1919 upon the initiative of Salamon Berger, textile merchant and industrialist, originally from the Slovak Republic. He donated to the Museum one among the first and largest folk costumes and textile collections.

The Berger Collection, the Croatian National Museum Collections, and the Museum of Arts and Crafts ethnographic collections constituted the Museum's initial holdings, today including around 80 thousand items.

The holdings include predominantly Croatian ethnographic heritage, classified in two principal groups: Croatian Folk Costumes and Selected Items of Popular Art and Handicraft.

The items associated with Croatia have been divided into three cultural zones - Pannonian, Dinaric, and Adriatic. The non-European cultures department includes traditional culture items of the peoples of Africa, Asia, Latin America, Australia, and Oceania. The said materials are associated mostly with explorations conducted towards the turn of the century by Dragutin Lerman, and Mirko and Stjepan Seljan. It is constantly being enriched through donations by artists, explorers, and missionaries.

Ever since its establishment, the Museum employed or was managed by renowned Croatian ethnologists and museologists, such as Vladimir Tkalcic, Milovan Gavazzi, and Jelka Radaus-Ribaric.