Kika Magalhães: actress in LA and motor vehicle museum heiress in Malaga

Kika Magalhães greets us in a Versace trench coat from '91 with the word Vogue printed in large letters, a rarity that she wears with an utterly natural flair. It's the first outfit chosen for the photo shoot that couples up with the museum's classic cars in every shot, a pose for which she puts on a pair of black high heels and draws on her acting skills to look at the camera almost without blinking. Yet, as soon as the last click sounds, Kika relaxes her pose and swaps the heels for comfortable black trainers. "Much better," she says with a smile. Nor in her day-to-day life does she travel around in the pink Cadillac by which she stands for another shot, this time wearing a sequined Enrico Coveri dress - in fact, she drives a Toyota Yaris. She is, along with her brother João and her mother Filomena, the heir to the Malaga Automobile and Fashion Museum (MAM), a motoring and haute couture empire, but it looks like no one gets to be a diva here - on the contrary, she says frankly: "No one had prepared us for this."

In her hands now lies the future of an exceptional collection that aspires to remain for many years to come in the rooms of the Tabacalera (Malaga's former tobacco factory). In December 2026 the ten-year extension to the last contract signed by her late father with Malaga city council will expire. According to this agreement city hall cedes the use of the space and the museum pays 7% of the entrance fees. "And we want to renew, we are working on it," confirms this native Portuguese woman in the most correct Spanish.

Based in Los Angeles where she has an acting career, Kika Magalhães never imagined she would be in this position. "I never thought that one day this would be ours, we never imagined my family not being here." Her visits to Malaga were sporadic, a stopover on her travels between Portugal and the United States, largely because the museum was her father's "territory". João Magalhães was a businessman and a dreamer and in his lifetime he managed to collect around 100 classic cars and more than 500 pieces of haute couture. Nevertheless, it all came to a head in August 2023 when João passed away before turning 80 due to acute pancreatitis. "In the last year we have had to deal with mourning and a new life," says Kika.

Suddenly, along with her mother and brother she had to take over the management of a museum designed down to the last detail by her father since it opened in Malaga in September 2010. "It was all very fast, a rollercoaster. This is a gift my father has left us, there are no words to describe it. We are very proud to move forward with him."

Moving to Malaga is starting to become "a very viable option" as she spends more and more time here getting to know the ins and outs of museum management, the quirks of each vehicle and planning the future of MAM. "Now that I want to be more a part of it I have to learn a lot about cars, fashion and how to run such a big business," she admits "with humility".

Her father grew up in this world. His passion for classic cars came from his father, Kika's grandfather, a businessman in the textile industry in Oporto who bequeathed several vehicles to his son with which he started his own collection. Yet this was not the world of Kika, making an acting career for herself in the States with several films, short films and video clips to her name. Nor was it the world of her brother João, an actor like her. In fact, it's not long since Kika acquired her driving licence and in her day-to-day life she drives around in a car with which she has difficulty remembering the make and model. "A Toyota Yaris!" she exclaims after thinking for a while, all the while surrounded by classic, vintage or high-powered cars.

"On more special occasions, I ask someone from the museum to drive one of these cars, because I don't dare to do it myself. Parking? No way!" she says.

Still, that is not incompatible with appreciating the beauty of these vehicles and their history. Nor is it incompatible with admiring her father more and more every day.

"He was a mysterious man and since his death we have learned more about him. There are things in the museum that we discover little by little, everything is a little box of surprises because everything is made by the hands of my father and his wonderful team. It's a very beautiful process," she says with emotion. Throughout the museum there is furniture specifically designed by João Magalhães to match the vehicles. Behind each of the cars there is a personal story: like the Rolls Royce Phantom that he had decorated to copy the one used by the Beatles in the '60s or the Cadillac that he painted the same colour as the pink lipstick worn by his wife, Filomena. His widow says that one day her lipstick disappeared from her vanity case and soon after her husband appeared with the car. That was João Magalhães.

So, between one car and another, throughout the 6,000 square metres of exhibition space, there are haute couture pieces. There are more than 500 garments from brands such as Chanel, Dior, Givenchy, Balmain and Prada, most of them stored in a room they call 'the cave', protected from external contamination and kept at the right temperature for their conservation. Every so often the ones on display are swapped to prevent them from suffering too much from the hundreds of people walking through the museum.

How all these design gems showed up in Malaga is also quite remarkable. João Magalhães was buying vintage items to decorate the museum and one day he acquired a suitcase full of old hats. "He was fascinated and from there an incredible fashion collection was born. A little paradise for a woman. Especially for me, who can wear the clothes," she jokes. No one else has that privilege, except Queen Letizia: "I would lend her a little outfit." Her family is convinced that the queen had something to do with the collection coming to Malaga. João Magalhães had tried to open the museum in Portugal for ten years with no response from relevant institutions, so he decided to write a letter to the then Princess Letizia. "A few months later we received a letter from Malaga expressing interest. We thought she must have done something, we would really like her to come here," says Kika.

Fourteen years have passed since then, with more than 700,000 visitors and almost 700 events held on the premises. The MAM closed 2024 with 90,317 visitors, 70% of them foreigners. This figure is double that of its neighbour, the Russian Museum with 40,979 visitors in 2023 and similar to that of the other great cultural centre on the outskirts of Malaga city, La Térmica (87,100 visitors last year). However, this total is far from the numbers achieved by the main cultural centres in the city centre (the Thyssen exceeded 200,000 and the Picasso was close to 800,000). This is the cost of being a few kilometres from the heart of Malaga.

The big challenge for the new generation at MAM is to give these numbers a real boost. "My brother and I have many projects. We are both thinking of coming here, investing more, putting on temporary exhibitions, making it better known internationally, collaborating more with other museums, with designers.... We have many ideas. We have a lot of ideas, we want to keep going forward to go further", says Kika, who also has the support of her mother Filomena for this new era for the MAM.

The bar is set high. "My father cannot be described in one word. He was a businessman, a man of mystery, a creative person, an artist, a genius. And a mad genius too," says Kika with a smile. "And a visionary," Filomena adds from behind.

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