Season 3 Episode 2: “Rhizome of Relations: Unfolding the Potential of the Modern Museum.” with Karen Grøn

Karen Holdaway Grøn is a museum director and curator of collaborative art projects at Trapholt Museum of Modern Art, Craft and Design, Kolding, Denmark. She researches how to make the arts accessible and relevant to diverse audiences through engagement and exchange. Since 2014, Grøn has led over ten large-scale participatory projects that merge contemporary craft with social engagement, placing citizens at the center of the artistic process. Her work is grounded in the belief that art museums can be inclusive spaces for public dialogue, reflection, and collective creation. Projects like Stitches Beyond Borders (2020), Data Mirror (2022), Things Matter (2023), and Among the Trees (2021–22) showcase her curatorial approach, which challenges traditional museum boundaries and empowers citizens as co-creators. Each project involves collaboration between professional artists—including Iben Høj, Astrid Skibsted, and Randi Samsonsen—and hundreds of participants. Using craft practices like knitting, quilting, and embroidery, participants engage in sensemaking that results in multi-voiced, materially rich installations exhibited at Trapholt and often added to its permanent collection. Grøn’s approach is supported by research with Aarhus University through the CraftWorks project, funded by VELUX FONDEN. This work shows how participatory craft strengthens civic engagement, community bonds, and democratises cultural production. Under her leadership, Trapholt has gained national and international recognition, including the 2021 European Art Museum Award, for pioneering inclusive, co-creative museum practices.

Johanna Magin is MLE's Community and Programs Manager. Originally American and based in Paris, Johanna holds a PhD in French literature from Columbia University (New York) and a BA in French from the University of Chicago. Her research has focused on the medico-philosophical practices of several early-modern French authors in an attempt to understand the relationship between mind and body, and more broadly between science and spirituality, in that time period. Always keen to understand mind-body processes from an experiential perspective, she has also practiced Buddhism intensively since 2008 (Zen and Dzogchen), practiced improvisational dance and theatre since 2009, and is currently training to become a Rosen Method bodywork therapist. Before joining MLE, she worked as an academic program manager and adjunct faculty member at Sciences Po in France, where she taught on a wide number of subjects, from philosophy as a way of life to the politics of poetry.