(1919-2022)
Meda Mládková, art collector, patron and founder of Jan and Meda Mládek Foundation and the Kampa Museum in Prague, which houses her wide collection of modern Central European art. After the communist coup in 1948, she remained abroad and socialized with the exiled members of the Czech intellectual and artistic elite. From the 1950s, she started collecting the works of the world-famous Czech painter František Kupka. Together with her husband, she supported Czech artists not recognized by the communist regime. After 1989, she returned to Czechoslovakia and set herself the goal of fulfilling the wishes of her husband, the economist and IMF official Jan Mládek, to build a decent venue for their collection in Prague. After ten years of ups and downs, she managed to acquire the devastated old mill building in Prague’s Kampa, from which she created an important cultural institution of the Czech capital.