Home to the largest collection of Nordic art, a converted grain silo is putting Kristiansand on Europe's cultural map. Ask any taxi driver, waiter, or friendly local selling crocheted monsters in a vintage boutique: Kristiansand has the best weather in Norway. Warm and bright in May, its pier is pimpled with people eating ice cream and yappy Yorkshire terriers, little kernels of life lolling beneath the towering cylindrical structures of a grain silo turned gallery.
The story of the Kunstsilo begins nine years ago, when hedge fund manager Nicolai Tangen - known in Norway as the "trillion dollar man" - decided to donate his art collection to his hometown. Made up of modernist pieces spanning 1930-1990, Tangen's collection features approximately 5,500 works that cover 560 different artists from every Nordic country. Most of them are unknown, their styles a blend of experimentation and European influences like surrealism.
"It's the art that appeals to me and it's the art that I grew up with," says the 57-year-old, who began his collection in the 90s and also completed a master's degree in art history at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London when he was 36. "I like to buy things which are out of favour so that you can build proper volumes of works and you're not always in competition with a lot of other people," he says. Kristiansand has roughly 130,000 inhabitants and was previously known for its zoo and amusement park (Norway's most popular attraction, apparently.
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