00:04
Nicolai Wallner
I chose a painting of Andrea Mantegna, who is an artist from the Italian Renaissance called Christ as the Suffering Redeemer.

00:15
Nicolai Wallner
It shows Christ sitting on a stone chair with two angels behind him. He has just exited the grotto where the disciples put him after he was taken down from the crucifix. He's showing his stigma, and the angels are destroyed. It's a very emotional painting about sorrow and loss of life and pain.

00:43
Nicolai Wallner
If you look in the background, you see people very far away in the landscape. You see them work, you see a person sitting on a lawn with a flute. As much as pain and suffering can be present, life goes on. It's about Christ, of course, but also about life on Earth.

01:09
Nicolai Wallner
It was an Italian art collector that I met many years ago who told me to go and see that painting. So every time I go into the museum, I go and see that. It's exceptional.

01:26
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
My name is Tina Jøhnk Christensen, and I'm the host of Danish Originals, a podcast series created in partnership with the American Friends of the National Gallery of Denmark and the National Gallery of Denmark. Our goal is to celebrate Danish creatives who have made a significant mark in the US.

01:44
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Today our guest is Nicolai Wallner, a Danish gallery owner. Welcome, Nicolai.

01:49
Nicolai Wallner
Thank you.

01:50
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Where are you at the moment? Please describe to our listeners what your location looks like.

01:57
Nicolai Wallner
I'm currently home in my house in a suburb of Copenhagen, called Charlottenlund. It's a rather green area of the surroundings around Copenhagen. I just came home from work today on my bicycle. Yeah, so I'm ready to talk.

02:17
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I'm in Los Angeles and you're in Copenhagen. So there's a nine hours' time difference between us. So it's six o'clock where you are. So, my day's started, your day's closing. Can you also describe a little bit the room you're in? I see a lot of books behind you. Are they art books primarily? What kind of books do you have in your library?

02:39
Nicolai Wallner
We have, I mean, I have a lot of books. Most of my books are actually at my work in my gallery, and those are primarily art books. So, I don't know, I have, I guess, a few thousand books. At my home, I have also art books. There's a lot of books about architecture, because my wife is an architect.

02:59
Nicolai Wallner
And the room I'm sitting in is our living room. We have a lot of artworks on the walls from the artists of the gallery. Yeah, so it's a room that I enjoy spending time in. It's nice, there's windows to the garden. We're very privileged as we live in the house of the Danish architect Arne Jacobsen. It's made in 1930. So it's a rather old house, but it's very modern at the same time because he was a very visionary architect. So we are very, very happy to live in this house made by him.

03:34
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I understand that! Let's turn to your career. You opened your gallery in Copenhagen in 1993. First of all, talk about the location of the gallery back then and how you picked it and why you thought that environment was suitable for what you wanted to achieve.

03:52
Nicolai Wallner
The first location of the gallery, the professional gallery, that opened in '93 was in the center of town, of Copenhagen, a street called Store Kongensgade. It was not as fancy as it may sound, because it was an extremely cheap space, a very rundown space that we could get for almost nothing.

04:18
Nicolai Wallner
That was the reason we chose that location. It was really cheap. We were there for a few years, and we moved to another space and we moved to another space and another space. And I think we have — I mean, the gallery is now more than 30 years, so we have moved around a bit.

04:35
Nicolai Wallner
The current space we have is in the northwest of Copenhagen, it's called. It's still very close to the center. If you compare it to Los Angeles, I would almost call it downtown. It's a very central location compared to a big city, but in Copenhagen, which is a much smaller town, it's in the outer area of Copenhagen.

04:57
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And Store Kongensgade, as you mentioned, sounds fancy today, because it's quite a fancy street. How would you describe Store Kongensgade to listeners who haven't been there?

05:08
Nicolai Wallner
Today it's a shopping street, there are restaurants. It's very close to the castle of the King. It's very close to a beautiful square called Kongens Nytorv. So it's quite centrally located. And back then, of course it had the same location, but there were cheaper spaces and other opportunities because there were there run-down spaces that we — we were lucky because we needed a cheap space because we didn't have any money to start the gallery. So it was really necessary for us to get a space that we could afford.

05:39
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What were your thoughts behind starting a gallery in the first place?

05:44
Nicolai Wallner
Since high school, I actually wanted to start a gallery. I had a teacher in the subject Danish. He was teaching us literature and art and things like that. And he was very inspirational. He was very interested in visual art and he talked a lot about art and artists and so on. I was very curious because my family is not really interested in contemporary art. When we went on holidays, we went to churches and archaeological museums, but not contemporary art.

06:11
Nicolai Wallner
At that time, when I went to high school, I knew perhaps Andy Warhol and Van Gogh. That was as much as I knew about art. But I got really curious and I went to visit some young artists at that time. I went to a lot of galleries and at that time there were not really many commercial galleries. It was more artist-run galleries, which was very privileged because then I actually met the artists because they were taking care of their own business.

06:38
Nicolai Wallner
I was only, I think 16. I did not know about any conventions about how to behave in the art world. I was, like any other 16-year old, curious. I went to them and said, why do you want to be an artist? Why does it cost this amount? Why did you turn the painting upside down? Where do you come from? So I was asking a lot of questions and I got even more interested in working with artists. So since high school, I decided that, okay, this is what I want to do.

07:07
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What do you think it was that motivated you? One thing is getting the interest in it and being 16 years old and being in high school and coincidentally having your eyes open to it. What motivated you to take another step and actually opened the gallery?

07:23
Nicolai Wallner
I mean, it's not something I thought about when I was 16, because, you know, when you are 16, you have a lot of other things on your mind. But as I got older, what motivated me and came to that kind of conclusion, I think part of it was that I grew up in what you would call a middle class family in a suburb of Copenhagen.

07:44
Nicolai Wallner
We were not rich. We were definitely not poor. It was ooh, middle class. And when you grew up in a Danish middle class in the '70s, what you get from your parents is normally like, you have to get an education — you have to go to high school, perhaps go to university — get a good education, go out in society, get a job, be an important part of society, get into the machine, be one of the big wheels in the big machine, and things like that, you know. Do something meaningful with your life, contribute to society.

08:15
Nicolai Wallner
And when I met the artists, I realized that there was a whole other group of people who were not part of that machine. They were actually not part of the big machine called society in the same way as anyone else I knew. Actually, nobody told them to be part of anything. Nobody told them to get up in the morning, make their art, and things like that. But they did it anyway.

08:37
Nicolai Wallner
And that I found extremely fascinating what they were doing. To be honest, what they were doing was something that society really did not need, in a way, like we need food, we need water, we need transportation. There's a lot of things that we actually need in society. But art is that extra thing that some of us believe is very important for our enlightenment and so on, but we can live without it.

09:06
Nicolai Wallner
And I found it extremely fascinating that some people were actually doing that irrational thing with their life, creating something that we did not ask them to do at all. And I found that extremely noble and very brave and very generous because let's say 99% of all artists in the world, they can never make a living from their art, but they try to do it anyway. So that was one fascination of the artists.

09:31
Nicolai Wallner
And the other thing is that I have this wish to work with people, I wish to manage talent. I could probably also have been a really good manager of other talents, like writers or actors or something like that, because I'm really interested in identifying potential and talent, and bringing it out into the world. And if I believe something is great, I want the whole world to see that. And until everyone understands that it's great, I don't stop. I think that's why I wanted to start a gallery.

10:05
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You don't have a formal education, but are a self taught art specialist. Have you been actively studying art history on the side, or was the knowledge you gained mainly from being in the world of art?

10:22
Nicolai Wallner
I never studied art. After I went out of high school, unfortunately my grades were not good enough to get into university to study art history. I tried to apply, but I couldn't get in with my grades. But honestly, I must say, I only applied because I wanted to meet other people sharing my interest in contemporary art because I did not really know anyone.

10:46
Nicolai Wallner
And I wanted to meet people that I could start a gallery with because I was young. I didn't have any money. I didn't know how to start a gallery. But if I could meet other people who shared my interest in art, maybe we could do it together. So that was the reason why I tried to get into study, but you know, I didn't get in.

11:04
Nicolai Wallner
Meanwhile, I was very active in other ways. I lived on Vesterbro in Copenhagen, another part of Copenhagen with my mom and brother in an apartment building. And there was a basement in that building that, you know, people living there, they could use it for birthdays and things like that. But nobody really used it. So I asked if we could have it for a few weeks, and everyone was cool with that.

11:30
Nicolai Wallner
So we did shows, actually starting when we went to high school. We did some shows in that basement with some friends and friends of friends who made art and things like that. And I started meeting artists because people came and said, Hey, what is this? And I was like, Oh, we just do a gallery for two weeks. And then we closed down. And somebody said, hey, can I do a show? And hey, sure. Yeah, when you want to do a show?

11:52
Nicolai Wallner
So we started doing shows occasionally. And it was a good way for us, me and a friend, to meet artists. And then at some point, some of these artists said, why don't we do a gallery together, like a permanent gallery? And I was like, yeah, yeah, I really wanted to do that.

12:09
Nicolai Wallner
And we found a way that if all of us, I think it was seven artists and me, if we put together a little money, I think it was probably the equivalent of, I don't know, $100 each a month, literally in a cigar box, I could pay the rent in the super cheap space in Store Kongensgade.

12:29
Nicolai Wallner
So we had a little money for the rent and for stamps, for sending out invitation cards. And then, I found ways to make a living, teaching at high schools, talking about art and stuff like that, because I knew a little bit about it at that time. So actually that allowed us to financially start the gallery for a very low budget.

12:49
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And you ended up becoming a part of changing the gallery culture in Copenhagen. I believe you wanted more contemporary artists represented. How successful were you in making this change seen from a current perspective?

13:05
Nicolai Wallner
I think we were very successful because when we opened the gallery in '93, it was the first, we can call it a commercial gallery for young artists. Commercial at that time did not mean that we sold artworks, but it meant that we were not subsidized, or we were not an artist-run space.

13:24
Nicolai Wallner
We had ambitions to sell art. We didn't do it, but we wanted to. So we were the first gallery at that time to work with a new generation of artists in '93. Other galleries were older galleries, they were a bit more conservative. And until we opened, the interesting part of the gallery scene had actually been run by the artists themselves. Artists themselves, they had been running galleries, artist-run spaces, they were taking care of their own exhibitions and so on.

13:55
Nicolai Wallner
So this was the first space that took some of the artists from those spaces and exhibited them in something that looked like a commercial gallery. And after we opened, what happened, which was, I think, one of the greatest achievements, we inspired others to open.

14:13
Nicolai Wallner
In the '90s, more and more young galleries opened, which was really great because it's not fun to be the best gallery in town, just because you are the only one. You want competition, you want somebody to work with or work against or collaborate with or fight with, because that creates a vibrant scene.

14:34
Nicolai Wallner
You can compare with the restaurant scene in Copenhagen now that we probably got the best restaurants in the world. Noma, which has for many years been one of the best restaurants in the world, I think Noma needed competition. Noma needed Geranium. Noma needed other restaurants. And I think why we have such a sublime restaurant culture today is because there was this competition.

14:59
Nicolai Wallner
Everybody wanted to be the best, to be the best, to be the best and competing with each other and things like that. And that was the same in the '90s. We really wanted to develop all the time. I think what made us successful was actually seeing how other galleries started opening up.

15:16
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I believe you were inspired by the way galleries worked in New York, for instance. What was it that attracted you to New York, and what is your relationship to the art scene there?

15:28
Nicolai Wallner
My first trips to New York were really formative, in the sense that at that time, there was no internet, there was no social media. When you wanted to learn about an exhibition, you could look in Artforum, which was the main art magazine in the world at that time. So traveling over there, seeing galleries in New York, was really inspirational in the sense that you could see how professionalized an art scene could be.

16:002
Nicolai Wallner
It was not dealers. It was gallerists representing artists in completely other ways than we had ever done it in Scandinavia at that time. It was representation. It was not just selling the work. It was also bringing the artist into the world, creating opportunities for them, representing them in all aspects of their life, professional, private, making sure that they could do their art.

16:28
Nicolai Wallner
And that's what I wanted. I wanted to represent artists and make opportunities for the artists to grow and create their art. And of course, going to New York was super mind blowing because that was the place and probably still is the place with the most important galleries in the world. That meant a lot.

16:52
Nicolai Wallner
The States has always been a place where you were looking towards. Since I started the gallery in the '90s, it was a place that you were looking towards for inspiration. But there was also, at that time when I opened the gallery, a new generation of artists from Copenhagen. Of course, everybody's standing on the shoulders of others, but they were doing their own works that actually had an impact also outside Denmark.

17:23
Nicolai Wallner
When the gallery was maybe five, six months old, we went to the first art fair in Stockholm. And I realized, okay, this is a completely different world. Next art fair, one year after we opened, that was in Cologne. That was the place in Europe at that time for galleries. Mind blowing. People were coming to us and telling us that they really found what we were showing interesting.

17:50
Nicolai Wallner
Then we went to an art fair, which was really spectacular, in New York called The Gramercy Show. And that was an art fair happening in the Gramercy hotel. And that was years before it was renovated and made fancy and things like that. It was a quite shitty hotel. But the great thing was that all the galleries in the '90s were really poor. So the way that some art fairs were made was that galleries in New York organized to take three floors of the Gramercy Hotel.

18:25
Nicolai Wallner
And what you paid to be part of that was the room. So you paid for your own room and then a little fee to the organization. And the great thing was, for a European gallery, that you could stay in the room. I was sleeping in the room, but we were also exhibiting. It was a great way to expose the art that we were showing at that time to a New York audience. And that was really interesting because that was a completely different audience than what we're used to in Denmark, especially, but also in Europe.

18:53
Nicolai Wallner
So the first fairs we took part in, like the Gramercy Show in New York at this hotel, has been formative. Also, when you forget where you came from, where you started, it's a good learning that you can do a lot if you don't have any money, because you're much more free in a way.

19:11
Nicolai Wallner
One of my friends, a good artist, David Strickley, he said, advice for art students, don't spend a lot of money on your degree show. A good artist can make art out of anything. And that was the vibe in New York at that time, because everybody was poor. There was no money in the '90s.

19:28
Nicolai Wallner
So, if you were going to do a show in a gallery, you could not go and ask for $10,000 or $100,000. You could have a budget of $100. And then you had to do what you could do with that. Find some garbage, and make something out of that. That was the vibe at the Gramercy.

19:44
Nicolai Wallner
It was like, we can't get a fancy trade center, make our booth with white walls. But we can move into this hotel, which is quite cheap. We can put the works on the bed because we're not allowed to put holes in the walls. And then we see what happens. And I like that kind of pioneer spirit. And it's good sometimes to remind yourself where you actually came from.

20:09
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Since you have experience with the American art scene, what does it take for a Danish artist, for instance, to make it in the US? What is the recipe?

20:19
Nicolai Wallner
I think to make it anywhere, you have to do great art. Of course it helps if you are in a certain gallery or if you are super well connected and curators love your work and things like that. But really it comes down to doing something that is relevant for the world and creating something that enlightens people and makes people see in new ways.

20:47
Nicolai Wallner
So the recipe is — It's hard to put together what is needed because it's not easy to make art. I think it's very difficult to make something really extraordinary. Yeah, you just have to be really good.

21:08
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Would you say you have a special connection to the US?

21:11
Nicolai Wallner
Yeah, I do actually, because my wife, she's half American. She was born in Berkeley. She moved to Denmark when she was four, but we still have her father living in Oakland. He comes here every summer for a few weeks and stays with us. So we are very connected with the States for sure.

21:31
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Do you go stay there?

21:33
Nicolai Wallner
Yeah, yeah, we have been there several times visiting him and traveling — California and New York and north of New York and so on. We've been there many times.

21:43
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And you have established your gallery internationally too. It started in Germany. What made you want to explore the international scene?

21:53
Nicolai Wallner
If you open a gallery today, everybody really wants to get out there, become international, get your artists out in the world. And I wanted that, of course, also. But I think in a way, we were privileged by not being privileged, because when I opened the gallery in Copenhagen, there was absolutely no interest in what we were showing.

22:15
Nicolai Wallner
I had museum people coming in the gallery, Danish museum people, not introducing themselves. And the only way I could tell they were from that museum was that they had a tote bag with the name of the museums with them. So we were kind of like, I think you're the director of Aarhus Kunstmuseum. There was absolutely no interest whatsoever at that time. It's many years ago. It changed a lot, fortunately.

22:40
Nicolai Wallner
I found out really fast, because I'm not that patient either, that if we were going to survive, if we were going to be able to create opportunities for the artists, we had to find other places where people would find our work interesting. And that's why we went to Stockholm, the first fair, we went to Cologne, later New York and so on. I realized very quickly that, okay, here are some people who connect with what we're showing. They actually get it. Some of them even want to buy it.

23:10
Nicolai Wallner
And then, you have this amount of resources, time, and money, and you just have to put it where you see you gain the most. And that was going to the art fairs, and creating this international network that we have been working with since. So we were pushed in that direction rather than choosing it. But after finding out this is a good place for us to be, of course, we prioritize that moving forward.

23:38
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Is there a philosophy behind the way you do business? Your father died before you were born. I read that it affected the dynamic in your family and you developed an urge to care for people. Did this affect the way you did business?

23:56
Nicolai Wallner
I definitely think that the part I talked about in the beginning about how you gain interest for working with people and taking care of people and prioritizing other people, has something to do with this element of empathy that is very strong in me, sometimes too strong.

24:18
Nicolai Wallner
When you are born into a family, in this case, my mother lost her husband and my father just months before to cancer — you're born into a family of a lot of pain, but also a lot of happiness because the birth of a child is a happy thing. At the same time, there's a lot of pain for the loss of the father, of my father. I guess Freud would also say that as a baby and a child, you feel those emotions very strongly and you start developing tools for taking care of other people.

24:50
Nicolai Wallner
If you're a baby, you can't take care of your mother, but you can be happy, and that makes her happy. Later in life, you can do things that make people happy, that makes people comfortable. So I think I have this element of, I'm really good at, for the people I love and the people I care for, I really engage myself emotionally. And I think that's very good to have that if you are working with artists, because it's not a cliché that artists, in many cases, can be very fragile.

25:22
Nicolai Wallner
Being an artist is tough because basically nobody needs what you do. And you are absolutely alone with what you do. You're not in a workplace, you're not in a team, you're alone. It can be very hard to be an artist. I'm very good at working with people who need my help and are my assistants.

25:40
Nicolai Wallner
I think my choice of profession and path of life has a lot to do with, like any other person, being born in the world, has a lot to do with growing up and choosing the path, maybe not only by choice, but also by unconsciously what created you as a human being.

25:56
Nicolai Wallner
I believe that I understand when people need my help, and I think that I create environments where it's comfortable and safe to reach out to me for help, for people working with me and people I'm surrounded by and things like that.

26:12
Nicolai Wallner
Many years ago in the '90s, there was a bar in Copenhagen, like a hip bar, where all the artists were hanging out, and I was hanging out there, and it was the cool place to be. I came there on the weekends. And there was a guy working there, and I knew a bit. And he said to me, Nikolai, you remind me a lot of Kermit. And I was like, Kermit? What do you mean, Kermit the Frog?

26:33
Nicolai Wallner
He said, yes, Kermit the Frog. I said, what do you mean by that? He said, well, a little green frog taking care of a crazy theater with all these artists with problems and egos, fighting each other, creating problems, and you're just trying to keep it all together, trying to keep the spirit high, and things like that.

26:53
Nicolai Wallner
And I was like, whoa, okay, you really get it. And so Kermit has been my idol since, because I really identify with him because he just tries to keep the shit together, and he just manages because he's very empathic.

27:08
Nicolai Wallner
And he just tried to do things right. And he's probably not a saint, but he's really hardworking and he understands all the egos and all the problems. He's really good at keeping showbiz going. It goes up, it goes down, but he's there for them. So he's my hero, Kermit the frog.

27:27
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Kermit the Frog. That's fantastic. You mentioned before that you have to be very talented and good to make it. But what is good from your point of view and what does it take for you to want to represent an artist?

27:44
Nicolai Wallner
Good can of course be many things because artists are using a lot of different tools, have different kinds of talent. They have different things they want to tell us and show us. I think there are artists who can create an emotional impact on people with their art. Some of them are using spectacle. Some of them do it with one brushstroke. When you're in front of something that really opens your eyes, not only the one that you use for seeing —

28:19
Nicolai Wallner
There was one artist telling me many years ago, he was talking about the difference between looking and seeing, and looking is what you do when you open your eyes, you know, you look in a book. Seeing is something else. Seeing is much more spiritual. Seeing is very connected to being enlightened. And when you really see something, it sounds almost religious, but it's not.

28:43
Nicolai Wallner
When you really see something that changes your perspective on life and existence, and if that seeing is created by art, I believe it's good art. It can have any kind of structure, color, shape. It can be painting, but it can also be performance. It can be anything. As long as it's enlightened you and makes you see. It's hard to get more specific, but you can also hear that it's not something that anybody can do.

29:15
Nicolai Wallner
There's a space for anybody who wants to be an artist, but we just have to accept that some are really sublime and some are — there are some that are absolutely fantastic and then there are all the others. That's just the way it is.

29:31
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And talking about that, how does one become a successful gallery owner? And maybe explain what your idea of success is.

29:42
Nicolai Wallner
To become a good gallery owner is, I think — I think it's important generally in life that you find something that makes you happy and then do that. Then at some point you might realize that I can't pay my rent with this activity, I can't feed my children (if you have children), I can't buy a new car. But then you have to think about, does this thing that makes you happy, does that happiness and joy overshadow the fact that you are not being paid very well for this?

30:21
Nicolai Wallner
If it does, it's great. And then you can continue your life being happy, but poor. You can also find out that, okay, I don't want to do this thing that actually made me happy. I'd rather do something that makes me less happy, but I make a lot of money on it. You can go that way. I don't want to call that a compromise, but you have to do what makes you happy. And sometimes you have to find the balance because you also have to pay your rent and things like that.

30:51
Nicolai Wallner
And it's the same being an artist. If you want to be an artist forever, you have to always remember why you started being an artist, that you started because it made you happy, because the art world is very tough. It's hard to be an artist. It sometimes also makes you envy seeing your colleagues being more successful than you, people you went to art school with, they get a show, they get the work sold and things like that.

31:18
Nicolai Wallner
And if you get envious and jealous, it can really eat you up. But if you can instead think, I'm extremely privileged because I do what I want to do in life, then you are maybe on the right path still. You just have to be sure that what you're doing feels right for you.

31:38
Nicolai Wallner
And I guess it's the same with running a gallery. If you want to be rich and famous and have all the best artists in the world, and be invited to this and that, and you fail, that might make you sad. Unless you remember that why you started a gallery was actually to have the freedom not to go into a law firm or sit in a bank or stand in a gas station, but actually work with artists. I really honestly think that even if I had not made money and things like that, I still think that I would be happy working with artists, because that's what I wanted to do.

32:20
Nicolai Wallner
And then starting early is great. Starting in a financial recession is really great because then nobody expects you to put up a lot of money and you're much more free. If I started a gallery today, it'd be, oh it has to have four walls, it has to be this amount of square meters, it has to be a little desk where somebody is sitting all the time. Because there's all these expectations about how to open a gallery today. But if you start in a recession, where there's no money, you can start under a bridge, and that is a privilege, to start under a bridge.

32:52
Nicolai Wallner
I had no money. I went to the bank to get a loan for $700. I needed $700 to start the gallery. The bank said, no, I don't think so. So we didn't get that loan. And I never had any loan in the gallery because I couldn't get any loan. That's a huge privilege. So, it's always good to start when there's absolutely no money. Starting on the top of a financial peak is not good because when it goes down, you're not prepared for that because you never try that.

33:23
Nicolai Wallner
It's not that difficult actually to start a gallery, if you don't have huge expectations. If you don't want to be Gagosian from the first day, just keep it down. Just start under that bridge, make a gallery in a public train. You can do whatever you want.

33:39
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What is your relationship to, maybe, art museums in general?

33:43
Nicolai Wallner
I mean, when I go into a museum today, when I go into Statens Museum, it sometimes get a bit emotional because it's a permanent collection and that means that many of the artworks, even, of course, there have been rehangings since I went to high school many years ago — there has been rehangings, but they are a permanent collection.

34:06
Nicolai Wallner
And that permanent collection is the collection that I've been looking at since the first time I went there. So, walking through the way that it's installed historically or thematically is something that is recognizable. I know exactly where this work is. I know exactly where this body of work is, or this school of works is, and things like that.

34:31
Nicolai Wallner
For me, it's because I love art, of course, but it's also my history. It's also remembering what was the emotional impact on me the first time I saw this specific painting, because some of them, I remember when I saw this painting for the first time. And I remember when I saw this installation of this sculpture, things like that.

34:53
Nicolai Wallner
So it's really like also revisiting your own life in a way when you go into a museum where you have been like 100 times, perhaps, and seeing the same works many times over and over again. It sounds boring, perhaps for some, but it's really not, because it's like revisiting your own life. I'd seen this painting when I was 16. I've seen it again when I was 18, 22, da da da da da da. Now I'm much older. So it's like seeing your life, in a way, and remembering your life. Yes, it's like milestones, going back in time and seeing, yeah.

35:32
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Does one look at the same painting in different ways when you are 16, 30, 40?

35:43
Nicolai Wallner
Yes, I definitely think so. There are different things going on in your head when you're 16 than if, when you're 46. And there are different things that are provoking emotions inside you when you are younger than when you're older. Okay, of course you get more knowledge, but the emotions you had when you were 16 can be as genuine and important as the one that you have much later in life.

36:12
Nicolai Wallner
But I also see works and think, I think I'm done with that. I remember it was very fascinating back then, but I think I'm done with that. But other works are opening up for me because I'm 100% sure that I'm more mature now than when I went to high school, hopefully. And there are other things more appealing now, than then. Yeah, I can really recommend to people this thing, art museums.

36:41
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And my final question for you. Maybe you have other things that you're passionate about that you would like to achieve. What's on your bucket list for the rest of your time here?

36:53
Nicolai Wallner
On earth?

36:54
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Yes, on earth. This is a big question.

36:58
Nicolai Wallner
I don't know. I like to get myself involved in sometimes public discussions and debates, in the sense that it's not that I have an opinion about everything at all, but sometimes I feel strongly about something and then I express myself in an interview or writing something for the newspaper. I don't know what you call it — editorial, writing to the paper because I really feel that something is very wrong.

37:30
Nicolai Wallner
Most of the time, it's something related to the art world, because I have a qualified opinion. That keeps me mentally busy, but I think running the gallery, working with the artists is something that of course occupies me and will occupy me for a very long time.

37:52
Nicolai Wallner
I don't have hobbies like golf or tennis or skateboarding or something like that. I like to go out into my garden. I just bought a palm tree. That's probably not very fascinating for people living in Los Angeles, but for me, it's very exciting. So I have a palm tree in my garden. I'm very happy with that.

38:13
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Thank you very much for being part of Danish Originals. We appreciate it.

38:19
Nicolai Wallner
Yeah, my pleasure.

38:25
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
For today's episode, Nicolai Wallner chose Andrea Mantegna's Kristus som den lidende freiser or Christ as the Suffering Redeemer from 1495–1500 from the collection of the National Gallery of Denmark.