Last year in June, Berlin's oldest street magazine "Strassenfeger" ceased their production after 24 years, leaving 300 sales people unemployed from one day to another. Together with the social cooperative KARUNA we couldn't let that happen, so within two weeks we came up with Berlin's youngest street magazine ...

When artist A.A. Bronson was asked to participate in the BMW Art Talk „Why Berlin? - The arts and the City“ at Soho House Berlin during Gallery Weekend 2018, he surprised everyone by performing a love letter to the city of Berlin which he had writted specifically for the occasion. The letter is based on The Epistle to the Galatians by Paul the Apostle and the performance moved almost everyone in the audience to tears (including us!). Months later we were in the midst of putting together a Berlin street magazine for the homeless called KARUNA KOMPASS. Discussing the lack of positive energy in Berlin, the letter popped into our heads. This incredibly inclusive and poetic letter that had been read to people sipping champagne in a super exclusive setting. Yet we thought it was meant to be heard by every Berliner regardless of their social background. With the kind support of Esther Schipper we got in touch with A.A. Bronson who gave us the right to publish the letter in this unusual context.

The year 1919 marks the beginning of Bauhaus. Yet with all eyes on the current 100th anniversary of the world famous institution, other reform movements originating in the modernist era of the 1920s still await their rediscovery.

Existing as the very first digital platform for collectors of contemporary art, Independent Collectors was founded in 2008 by a group of collectors and friends surrounding Christian Kaspar Schwarm (b. 1972, Germany) who dared to open access to a previously hidden world. Today we are the largest non-commercial archive of private collections worldwide.

The BMW Art Guide by Independent Collectors is your go-to guide to privately built yet publicly accessible collections of contemporary art. The very first of its kind, the art guide allows you to discover and personally visit havens of contemporary art that you would not know to exist.