The museum was founded in 1989 by Johannes Kokk. 1992. In 1992, it was taken over by textile artist Anu Raud, who in turn donated the museum and its collections to the Estonian National Museum in 2009.
The collections consist primarily of ethnographic textiles and everyday utilitarian objects, but also include archival sources and photographs. The total size of the collection is 4,000 museum objects, of which 1,850 are physical objects. Materials of Mulgi origin predominate, but the collection also includes items gathered from the islands, Läänemaa, and elsewhere in Estonia, as well as contemporary objects created on ethnographic themes.
To distinguish materials from the Heimtali Museum from other ERM collections, the accession book code HM is used (the numerical field TRT in the Museums Web Portal).