At the beginning of the 60s Ascoli, despite experiencing a lively cultural season, did not yet have a civic institution that represented the artistic movements of the twentieth century.

The painter Ernesto Ercolani, former director of the Pinacoteca since 1949, filled this void with the creation of a contemporary art collection limited to graphics: the Civic Gallery of Modern Graphic Art, inaugurated on 18 October 1964 in the halls of the sixteenth-century Palazzo Malaspina.

The goal of expanding to other art forms to create a real contemporary art gallery had been in the intentions of the curators from the outset, but only in 1977 did the graphic art gallery become the Civic Gallery of Contemporary Art.

At the end of the 1990s, in addition to numerous paintings by artists such as Fontana, Matta, Hartung, Morandi, De Pisis and Severini, 40 paintings and 38 drawings by Osvaldo Licini, from Caterina's collection, became part of the gallery's museum heritage. Celi Hellstrom, adopted daughter of Osvaldo Licini's wife. Strengthened by this new prestigious endowment, the "Osvaldo Licini" gallery in 1999 moved to the former convent of S. Agostino and was named after the Master of Monte Vidon Corrado, whose tormented creative path, which ranges from the figurative to the abstract, you can retrace it in full by visiting this museum.

In 2007 the Gallery was further enriched (thanks to the concession on deposit by the Carisap Foundation) of 50 preparatory drawings, made in 1988 by Tullio Pericoli for the decoration of the Sala Garzanti in Milan.