Museum Kampa: Prague's Premier Modern Art Venue

Museum Kampa was founded in Prague on February 26, 1999, by Meda Mládková. It was established as the home for the Jan and Meda Mládek Foundation collection and is located in renovated former watermills on Kampa Island.

Following a lease agreement signed in 1999, reconstruction of the former watermills began. The project preserved the neo-Gothic facade and integrated new elements by Václav Cigler, Marian Karel, and Dana Zámečníková. Meda Mládková also had an apartment in a house on the south side of the courtyard.

The grand opening of Museum Kampa took place on September 8, 2003, after the reconstruction of the former watermills.

In 2002, the private collection of works by Jiří Kolář and Běla Kolářová was acquired as a donation to the Jan and Meda Mládek Foundation.

In 2007, Meda Mládková purchased a collection of Czech art assembled by Grit Wendelberger, which included a large collection of etchings and pastels by Václav Boštík.

In exchange for renovating the building and leasing it free of charge, the City of Prague received a donation of paintings, collages, and art artifacts valued at CZK 600 million.

In 2015, The Guardian ranked Museum Kampa among the five most interesting private museums in Europe, highlighting its significance.

During the normalization period in Czechoslovakia, Meda Mládková continued to purchase artworks by artists who were not allowed to exhibit at the time, building a significant collection.

Meda Mládková assembled an extensive collection of František Kupka's works starting in the 1950s, making it one of the most comprehensive collections of his work in private ownership.

The Mládek couple systematically purchased bronze casts of Otto Gutfreund's plaster sculptures, acquiring a representative collection that Meda Mládková later insisted be exhibited alongside Kupka's paintings.

Meda Mládková systematically collected Czech and Central European artworks from the 1960s to the 1980s, focusing on pieces that reflected confrontation with political persecution and the path to freedom through art.

Meda Mládková began collecting modern Czech glass in 1967, which grew rapidly and formed the basis of exhibitions, leading to the incorporation of glass elements in the museum's architecture.

Initiated in 1989, this collection aimed to raise funds for Jindřich Chalupecký's medical treatment and eventually became part of the Kampa Museum's art collection in 1994.

During the reconstruction of the Sova mills, artists Václav Cigler, Marian Karel, and Dana Zámečníková integrated modern glass elements, including a glass bridge and footbridges, into the museum's architecture.

Meda Mládková founded the Museum Kampa in 1999 and was instrumental in building its extensive art collections, particularly works by František Kupka and Otto Gutfreund, and in the reconstruction of the building.

The late 1960s represented a productive period for Czech art during the Prague Spring, but this was followed by twenty years of 'parallel culture' for most artists after the Soviet occupation in 1968.

Following the 2002 floods, the former stables at Museum Kampa were adapted for exhibition purposes in the subsequent years.

The museum is situated in renovated former watermills in the center of Kampa Island, Prague, a site with a history of mills dating back to the Middle Ages.

Since 2022, the permanent exhibition of the Kampa Museum collections has also been hosted at the castle in Moravský Krumlov, where the Slav Epic is displayed until 2026.