Collector Karen Boros joins Roland-Philippe Kretzschmar in the latest episode of The Art Bystander podcast. Karen Boros and her husband Christian began by collecting artists of their own generation. As they grew older, they made a deliberate decision to keep following younger artists, eventually those of their son’s generation. Collecting became a way of staying engaged with experiences and ideas beyond their own.

That willingness to remain curious runs through our conversation, recorded in Karen’s home above the Boros bunker in Berlin, after she had taken us through the collection downstairs.

Opened to the public in 2008, the collection occupies a former air-raid shelter that has also served as a prison, a warehouse and a techno club. Its changing presentations bring contemporary art into spaces where the building’s history remains impossible to ignore.

Karen’s experience extends across several parts of the art world. With a background in psychology and art history, she worked in galleries before joining Art Basel in 2005, working in VIP relations for Germany. Alongside building the collection with Christian, she has spent years engaging with other collectors and the relationships through which people find their way into art.

She is candid about how their own decisions happen. “Sometimes I think we should have a strategy, but we don’t,” she tells me. The collection grows through exhibitions, encounters and conversations, supported by longstanding trust in particular galleries.

I wanted to explore how an initial interest becomes a lasting commitment to an artist. What gives you confidence in a practice? What happens when it develops in a direction you hadn’t expected? And what can collectors contribute through the works they buy, the projects they support and the audiences they help artists reach?

Karen makes a point about galleries that deserves more attention: they produce exhibitions that anyone can visit for free. She also speaks about the importance of a work leaving the studio, being seen and entering into discussion. Supporting art involves making those encounters possible.

We talk about Berlin’s changing artistic communities, the challenge of encouraging younger people to collect, and the care involved in opening a private collection to the public. Some people arrive at the bunker knowing the artists; others come for the building and discover the art.

Karen calls them guests. By the end of our conversation, you understand how much work goes into making that word meaningful.

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Lidewij Edelkoort on how long trends really take

“Most of the time we only work on the long-term trend. Because the short TikTok things, for a few weeks, are not really interesting in the long run. They just give shape to the big movement. Recently, I showed my books to a publisher and we came to the conclusion that most trends take 20 to 25 years to arrive and to really blossom.”

What happens when we give ourselves permission to play, make mistakes and follow an idea before we know where it will lead? Recorded at Hotel Diplomat in Stockholm, this episode of The Art Bystander brings together host Roland-Philippe Kretzschmar, trend forecaster, publisher and educator Lidewij Edelkoort, and design curator, author and trend analyst Philip Fimmano.

Lidewij Edelkoort on trusting intuition

“I have given my intuition the sole power to give me the messages. So it’s almost something which is working outside my body and my own spirit. It’s going around without me even knowing it is. So it’s completely subconscious, doing its work, and then I just have to say, ‘Thank you very much. This is a very good idea.’ And I do believe that ultimately our intuition is not ours. It’s our common field, which is this big field of experience and soul processes which are around us.”

Their exhibition, INNER CHILD: Playing with Design at Artipelag, provides the starting point for a conversation about childhood, intuition, craftsmanship and the human need to create.

Philip Fimmano on play and the freedom to make mistakes

“Being experimental and taking risks and not being afraid of making mistakes or starting again. These are all the lessons that you learn when you’re playing with toys or even art materials as a child. It’s hard if you’re a perfectionist, like Li and me, but I think through the exhibition we’ve learned how to let go a little bit more. We’re also in a time frame now where everything doesn’t have to be perfect all the time. You can allow yourself to be a bit more playful or express a sense of humour and not take everything so seriously."

Edelkoort explains why the cultural changes she identifies can take 20 to 25 years to become fully established. Fimmano reflects on experimentation, the freedom to begin again and how designers have reconsidered their priorities since the pandemic.

Lidewij Edelkoort on craft and the need for touch

“I believe that people want to speak about craft more as a unique discipline because we need to rekindle it. […] Craft is not just a word like design and art. It’s almost a mentality. […] Our fingers are sort of thirsty for touch. So I guess this is why craft is now so prominent.”

Together, we discuss fashion’s relentless overproduction, the increasingly fluid boundaries between art, craft and design, and how AI might reshape work and education. We also explore Edelkoort’s “age of the amateur”: a possible future in which learning, making and shared interests occupy a larger place in our lives.

Philip Fimmano on the “age of the amateur”

“This is what Li calls the age of the amateur, because we’re going to be embracing hobbies and learning and craft like never before, where it becomes our main focus. In our spare time, so-called free time, we’re going to be investing in learning more, in becoming better at a certain technique or a certain pastime. The idea of cottage industries and doing things at home, and interacting with others, coming together as groups and socialising, all of this is going to be based on this idea that we’re all amateurs and lovers of certain things, and that we then invest ourselves in them like never before.”

INNER CHILD: Playing with Design brings together more than 200 objects by over 100 designers and studios from 23 countries. On view at Artipelag, outside Stockholm, from 10 October 2026 to 11 April 2027.

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What changes when an artist runs a gallery? Recorded inside 2 Mira Archiv in Madrid, this episode of The Art Bystander Podcast brings Roland-Philippe Kretzschmar together with Spanish artist and gallerist Mira Bernabeu, founder of 1 Mira Madrid and an archive space dedicated to conserving, digitising and exhibiting cultural material.

Bernabeu’s career connects the making of images with the practical responsibilities of supporting other artists. From studying psychology and fine art to developing staged photographs with his own family, he has consistently examined the relationships, expectations and systems through which people organise their lives.

That perspective also informs his gallery. We discuss his years co-directing Espaivisor in Valencia, his move to Madrid, and why he decided never to exhibit his own work in his gallery. He explains how he builds connections between exhibitions, what he has learnt from international art fairs, and how he balances artistic conviction with the need to sustain a business.

At the centre of the conversation is the archive. Bernabeu recalls working with Graciela Carnevale to create a facsimile of the Tucumán Arde archive, enabling it to circulate while the original remained in Argentina. He also describes the research and conservation involved in working with artists’ papers, photographs and objects, including the archive of Lea Lublin, and considers how that work will change as more of an artist’s life is recorded digitally.

The conversation becomes personal as Bernabeu reflects on surviving a stroke, becoming more direct, and resisting the expectation that he should abandon his plans. He describes how he protects time for his own practice while establishing an archive that has become a substantial new commitment.

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