The Nicanor Piñole Museum was created in 1991 to house the collection of paintings and drawings that Nicanor Piñole's widow, Enriqueta Ceñal Costales, donated to the city of Gijón. Its main mission is the study, conservation and dissemination of the work of this artist, one of the main responsible for the renewal of Asturian painting in the first third of the 20th century .

The museum is located in the old Asilo Pola, an eclectic-style building designed in 1903-1904 by Luis García Bellido and built by Miguel García de la Cruz. The permanent exhibition presents a wide selection of oil paintings, sketches, notes and drawings by Nicanor Piñole (Gijón, 1878-1878), following chronological and thematic criteria. Along with the most relevant works of his artistic career, personal objects and a wide selection of drawings are exhibited that offer an intimate view of the artist and his family environment.

The museum's collection is made up of the collection donated by the painter's widow and the deposits of the Jovellanos Birthplace Museum, the Asturias Fine Arts Museum and the Reina Sofía National Art Center Museum. Within the collection all the genres that Piñole cultivated throughout his long artistic career are represented, the portrait, fundamentally self-portraits and family portraits, the landscape, still lifes and scenes of a costumbrista nature, a theme in which he deals original and renovating form the Asturian landscape and paisanaje.

An outstanding aspect of the museum's collection are the more than five thousand drawings, sketches, notes, poster designs, illustrations, etc. that provide the fundamental keys to interpret the creative process of this artist with a marked realistic vocation. Together with them, there are also a significant number of self-portraits, landscape annotations, taken from nature, and portraits of family members in everyday attitudes, works that are characterized by their immediacy, technical quality and formal beauty.

The museum also has a series of the artist's personal objects, including his painting tools, the medals and recognition he received throughout his career, the family's photographic archive, his library and the furniture in his House. The documentary and bibliographic fund it treasures all the documentation related to the collection, as well as an outstanding artist archive. The museum has a large library specializing in art history with an outstanding section on painting and sculpture from the 19th and 20th centuries and Asturian art.