The museum was founded by the couple Maarten and Reina van Bommel-van Dam, who started collecting modern art after the Second World War.

[clarification needed] For this reason they decided to donate the entire collection of about 1,200 paintings, drawings, etchings and lithographs to the Municipality of Venlo, under one condition, which consisted of the creation of a museum in a building connected to a private house, where the couple could live.

They were the first private collectors to buy work from local artists from Limburg like Ger Lataster and Aad de Haas.

In the 1950s and 1960s works of Melle, Armando, Edgar Fernhout and Jan Schoonhoven were added; the art of Shinkichi Tajiri, Karel Appel, Gerrit Benner, Eugène Brands, Constant Nieuwenhuys, Guillaume Cornelis van Beverloo, Jaap Nanninga, Lucebert, Anton Rooskens en Theo Wolvekamp stand out by the fact that these artworks represent early periods.

His wife Reina van Dam, born in Voorthuizen on 31 December 1910, died on 29 July 2008 at the age of 97.