The museum takes its name from a figure who still provokes debate across West Sumatra. Adityawarman was the 14th-century founder and ruler of Malayapura in the Minangkabau Highlands, a prince who brought glory to the Minangkabau kingdom. But he was also connected to Javanese royalty, and in a culture defined by matrilineal descent and fierce regional identity, that association carried a sting. When Education Minister Mohammad Yamin proposed naming a new West Sumatran university after Adityawarman in the 1950s, the public rejected it outright -- the institution became Andalas University instead. Governor Harun Zain refused the name for the museum too, when construction began in 1974. It was only after his successor, Azwar Anas, took office that the name stuck. The museum was inaugurated on March 16, 1977, and formally established as the State Museum of West Sumatra on May 28, 1979. Even a museum's name, it turns out, can be a battleground for identity.

As of 2006, the museum held 5,781 items spanning the ethnographic richness of West Sumatra. The collections cover two distinct cultural traditions: the Minangkabau, the highland people known for their matrilineal social structure, ornate wood carving, and the Rumah Gadang architecture the museum itself embodies; and the Mentawai, the indigenous people of the islands off Sumatra's western coast, whose tattoo traditions, animist beliefs, and material culture stand in vivid contrast to the Islamic Minangkabau mainland. The most prized objects connected the present to an older past altogether -- relics from the 11th-century Malay-Buddhist kingdom of Dharmasraya, including duplicates of the statue of Bhairawa and the Amoghapasa inscription. The originals reside in Jakarta's National Museum, but their copies in Padang served as a reminder that West Sumatra's history predates Islam, predates the Minangkabau kingdom itself, reaching back into a Buddhist era few visitors expect.

On September 30, 2009, a magnitude 7.6 earthquake struck off the coast of Padang, collapsing buildings across the city and killing 1,115 people. The Adityawarman Museum did not escape. More than 80 percent of its collection was destroyed -- ceramics shattered, textiles buried, artifacts that had survived centuries of tropical humidity and political upheaval reduced to fragments in a few seconds of seismic violence. The loss was staggering not just in volume but in kind. Many of the objects were irreplaceable ethnographic pieces, handcrafted items from Minangkabau and Mentawai communities that documented ways of life already under pressure from modernization. The building's traditional Rumah Gadang structure, while damaged, proved more resilient than the collection it sheltered. In the years since, the museum has worked to rebuild what it can, though some losses are permanent -- a reminder that cultural preservation is always a race against time, and sometimes time wins in a single catastrophic minute.

The museum building itself remains a primary attraction, perhaps even more so than what it contains. The Rumah Gadang is the emblematic structure of Minangkabau architecture: raised on stilts, its soaring roof shaped like the horns of the water buffalo from which the Minangkabau take their name. The two rangkiang flanking the entrance are traditional rice granaries, symbols of prosperity and community provision that once stood beside every great house in the highlands. Built on a 2.6-hectare plot beginning in 1974, the museum took three years to complete, blending traditional Minangkabau construction principles with modern materials capable of housing a state collection. In 2001, management transferred from national oversight to the West Sumatran Regional Government under the Department of Culture and Tourism, a shift reflecting Indonesia's broader move toward regional autonomy. Today the building stands as both a museum and an artifact in its own right -- a working example of the architectural tradition it was built to preserve.