March 11, 2026

Collecting Art for the Next Century with Sonia Borrell

50 minutes

Today I am speaking with long time ultra-contemporary art collector, curator, author and entrepreneur Sonia Borrell (@soniabblondon). Originally from Barcelona, Sonia was drawn to art since childhood but trained to become a lawyer to meet family expectations. Upon moving to London after graduation, she immersed herself in the local art scene and quickly left law behind.

She started her collection in 2008 and has since dedicated her life to discovering, nurturing championing and uplifting artists through her own acquisitions and by acting as a bridge between the creative and business sides of the art world. She wrote Art in Real Time, full of advice for artists and collectors and recently she launched StudioToGallery, a platform where she mentors artists at scale and which has seen hundreds of applicants within the first few weeks of launching.

With Sonia we talked about the way art has become a shared family passion, how she thinks about legacy and why collectors must embrace their custodial responsibility to artists and to the ecosystem — a point that resonates deeply in a changing art world where artists increasingly treat their practice as equal parts business and art.

Sonia’s journey is very rich and layered, and we could have talked for much longer but I will leave you to discover her story!

References mentioned in the episode: