The Kamala Devi Museum was set up by the Srinivas Malliah Memorial Theatre Crafts Trust, established in 1968 by late Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya, a freedom fighter and a pioneering spirit in social, economic and cultural development work related to women's welfare, cooperatives, handicrafts and theatre.
The Trust was founded in memory of her colleague U. Srinivas Malliah, an eminent national leader, deeply involved in rural arts and crafts.
One of the main objectives of the Trust was to preserve and promote traditional Indian theatre forms and crafts associated with them and maintain and operate a Theatre Crafts Museum as well as a Theatre Crafts Centre.
The Trust later named the Museum after Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay.
The Museum was conceived to preserve the best examples of traditions of crafting headgears, costumes, ornaments and stage props etc. of traditional theater forms and other related genres threatened by hybrid modernization.
The Museum collection from all over the country, specially, rural areas, is of about 5000 objects. The material collected during surveys of traditional theatre forms and crafts initiated by Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay from 1958 to 1965 under the aegis of the Bhartiya Natya Sangha passed on to the Trust at its inception, as well as gift of her own collection of rare objects and books form the core of the collection.