Everyone has a passion project that they would be happy to spend years working on. In the case of Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund CEO Nikolai Tangen, it’s his art collection.
This is not just a collection. Tangen, who oversees $1.6 trillion worth of investments at Norges Bank Investment Management, has more than 5,000 works of art, which he chose to house in a century-old granary located in the small town of Kristiansand.
The exhibition, called Kristiansand Kunscilo, features a variety of Norwegian artists and costs $46 million, but is not intended to be merely a window into Tangen’s artistic interests. It aims to attract more tourists to the city and eventually someday compete with other museums in Norway.
“I think they are becoming more interested in Scandinavian art,” Tangen. told Bloomberg, referring to foreign visitors. “I hope this will increase competition in the Norwegian museum world. I’d like it to be like a little annoying mosquito that just puts on the best exhibitions so people in Oslo say, “God, what’s going on in this city?”
The CEO of Norges Bank has been collecting art for almost 35 years. In choosing art, Tangen follows the advice he gives to fund traders: think contrarian. Instead of buying new art that comes on the market, he buys pieces that are over 50 years old to see their value over time.
Kuncilo, which once housed 15,000 tons of grain, is now a gallery with an extensive global collection of contemporary Scandinavian art.
“It was always intended to be a museum collection, which means you want to have the most important artists and the most important works,” Tangen said.
Additional Tangen Podcasting
It’s often thought that CEOs are too busy doing anything other than business. But their interests outside of work have been making headlines lately. Think Goldman Sachs’ David Solomon’s love of DJing or Mark Zuckerberg’s penchant for mixed martial arts.
Like his colleagues, Tangen also has many interests.
If running the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund and collecting contemporary art isn’t enough for him, Tangen has another side gig with top business executives: he hosts a weekly podcast with them.
He interviews some of the world’s most influential executives, from Tesla’s Elon Musk to Santander’s Ana Botín, covering personal and professional topics. Titled In good companythe podcast was Tangen’s pandemic baby.
By giving listeners “a little bit of his secret sauce,” the head of Norges Bank aims to make the fund as transparent as possible, he said in an interview with The Guardian. Wall Street Journal last month.
Tangen’s love of art may just be another way of connecting with people and introducing them to Norwegian culture.