The founding date of the Žemaičių Naumiestis Museum is considered to be 1952, when Benediktas Orentas, who began working as a history teacher at the then Žemaičių Naumiestis Secondary School, established a local history club. Together with his students, the historian collected exhibits from the residents of the town and its surroundings for several decades. The exhibits were kept in a small room at the school.
In 1962, the Lithuanian Local History Society granted this museum the status of a Community Museum.
As time passed, the number of exhibits kept growing, and the school’s cramped premises soon filled up with museum items steeped in history. It was then decided to move the museum and all its exhibits to a building located in the heart of Žemaičių Naumiestis, in Pergalės Square. This took place in 1970, and since then the museum has remained in the same premises. The space allocated to the museum was much larger, so more room could be devoted to the exhibits. In 1992, the Žemaičių Naumiestis Museum became a branch of the Šilutė Museum. Ten years later, this cultural centre was renamed as a unit of the Žemaičiai Region Ethnocultural Centre, and in May 2015 it was returned to the administration of the Šilutė Museum.

Another important date for the Žemaičių Naumiestis Museum is 2010, when a decision was made to renovate the building and the museum was temporarily closed. Some of the exhibits were then moved to the homestead of K. Vilniškis, where exhibitions of the forge and agricultural implements were opened in 2012 and are still operating today. At the time, it was believed the museum would be closed only briefly. Unfortunately, it turned out differently. In 2013, after the renovation work was completed, the museum was unable to resume its activities… Two more years passed, and finally the long-awaited day came when the museum opened its doors to visitors. This can be called a historic event.

The Žemaičių Naumiestis branch of the Šilutė Hugo Šojus Museum holds around 20,000 exhibits reflecting the everyday life, trades, crafts, and the history of the town’s ethnic communities in the former Žemaičių Naumiestis rural district (valsčius). The museum preserves valuable collections of archaeology, ethnography, historiography, iconography, folk art, and numismatics. At present, only one exhibition hall is open in the museum building, displaying a selection of ethnographic objects and the furniture of a well-to-do townsman, made in the mid-20th century by a local craftsman, Anskis Srūgis. There are also exhibits reflecting the spiritual world—Evangelical hymnals, a Jewish holy book, and Catholic “holy figures” (šventukai). These latter items represent the three religious denominations that existed in Žemaičių Naumiestis.