About

The Werich Villa Art Centre is an open multicultural platform offering permanent exhibitions as well as theatre performances, concerts, discussions and creative workshops for a wide spectrum of visitors. The Werich Villa, together with the nearby Kampa Museum art gallery, was established and is operated by the Jan and Meda Mládek Foundation.

The permanent exhibitions in the Werich Villa and the program of live and performance arts are oriented primarily on the life and work of the actor, playwright and writer, Jan Werich, while presenting, in a wider context, the transformation of the cultural, social and political life in Czechoslovakia during the course of almost the entire 20th century. The exhibit also commemorates Werich’s lifelong creative partner, Jiří Voskovec, the phenomenal composer Jaroslav Ježek, and also other personalities that lived in the villa in the last century (the poet Vladimír Holan, historian Zdeněk Wirth, etc.). The aristocratic Nostitz family, who owned the building in the past, is also mentioned.

The pleasant visitor facilities with a café is moreover a wonderful place for planning a tour of the city of Prague or for enjoying a break on Kampa, the most beautiful urban island in the world.

The Jan and Meda Mládek Foundation

The Jan and Meda Mládek Foundation was established by dr. Meda Marie Mládková in order to promote and operate the collection of modern art collected by Jan and Meda Mládek from the 1950s on. In addition to this collection, the foundation tends the Jiří and Běla Kolář Collection and the Collection for Jindřich Chalupecký. The works of art from these collections are displayed in Museum Kampa and in a permanent exhibit in the chateau in Moravský Krumlov and they are also regularly lent to Czech and international exhibitions.

Museum Kampa, which is located in the reconstructed Sova’s Mills, is the pilot project of the Jan and Meda Mládek Foundation. Mrs Meda Mládková donated a large part of her extensive collection to the city of Prague, while the foundation received the building of the historical mills in its care. It reconstruction, connected with the creation of a museum of modern art, meant this dilapidated complex would be preserved. Museum Kampa presents to the public the era of “modernism behind the iron curtain” and the important collection of modern works by painter František Kupka and sculptor Otto Gutfreund, who Meda Mládková discovered, at the very least for the international public. In addition to its permanent exhibit, Museum Kampa prepares many short-term exhibitions of Czech and foreign modern and contemporary artists.

In addition to its collection and exhibition activities, Museum Kampa places a great emphasis on educational programmes, as part of which it organises many accompanying events dedicated to schools, families with children, students, senior citizens and others from the public at large. The idea behind the accompanying programmes is expanding interest in modern art and the degree of understanding and interaction with the exhibited works.

Another area the foundation is involved in is publication and outreach activities. The Jan and Meda Mládek Foundation issues catalogues for almost all of the short-term exhibitions held in Museum Kampa and for its permanent exhibits, though it has also, for example, published three volumes of correspondence between Jiří Voskovec and Jan Werich in cooperation with the Akropolis publishing house.

The goal of the foundation’s activities is to support the development of the arts and culture in the Czech Republic, to introduce the public to modern art and to contribute to the revival and strengthening of awareness of cultural traditions in the aforementioned areas of art.

“If a nation’s culture survives, then so too does the nation.“
– Jan Mládek