The Minsk Society of Lovers of Natural Sciences, Ethnography and Archeology was formed with the support of the Minsk City Duma, under the chairmanship of A.K. Amanfinsky, with the aim of natural-historical, geographical and ethnographic research of the Minsk province. Soon, the Society opened a museum with 5 expositions: archaeological, natural science, historical and ethnographic. Over time, minerals, stuffed animals, numismatic collections, and samples of folk life appeared. In addition, the society was engaged in the protection of natural monuments and contributed to the dissemination of natural history and geographical knowledge within the Minsk province. In 1912, the society was located in the premises of the gymnasium K.O. Falkovich, since 1913 - in the Minsk City Museum.

In 1916, with the assistance of the society, an exhibition of folk decorative art was opened.

In 1919, the Belarusian State Museum was opened in Minsk, the basis of the collection of which was the exhibits and materials of the Minsk Church and Archaeological Museum and the Minsk Society of Natural Science, Ethnography and Archeology Lovers. The museum was replenished with the results of archival searches, archaeological excavations, and ethnographic expeditions. By 1941, he had more than 60 thousand exhibits.

The society included one of the first local historians of Minsk Alexander Pavlovich Smorodsky, thanks to whom the oldest exhibit, from which the museum business in Minsk began, was preserved - an old printed book with a donation note enclosed in it, which formed the basis of the ethnographic exhibition "History of the Museum - the history of the country: a century-long journey", held at the National Historical Museum of the Republic of Belarus in 2022.