Journal - The John Adams Institute

Race, Class and Gender in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade

By Dario Graziano

December 5, 2024

Coming from a country that in the 1930s was already quite multicultural, the Americans that fought in Spain were from a variety of socioeconomic classes and from different (ethnic) backgrounds. Most of them were white working class men with strong communist convictions, but recent studies are drawing attention to the women and African Americans that …...

The Spirit of Solidarity: A Closer Look at the Abraham Lincoln Brigade

By Dario Graziano

November 28, 2024

From July 1936 to April 1939, the Spanish Republican government waged a war against the fascist forces led by dictator and general Francisco Franco. Twenty-seven nations quickly signed an alliance pledging non-intervention. The United States adopted a position of non-intervention as well, although unofficially. At the same time, Mussolini and Hitler aided Franco with huge …...

200 Years of American Photography

American Photographers in conversation. In collaboration with the Rijksmuseum

Feb 09, 2025, 1:30 pm - 3:00 pm

Join the Rijksmuseum and the John Adams Institute in welcoming photographers from the United States whose work is on view in the major exhibition on American photography. Their collective works invite us to investigate what America is, not only in the present, but also what it has been in pivotal moments since the invention of …...

Thunderstorms in Art and Literature

By Jan Wim Buisman

November 7, 2024

Benjamin Franklin’s invention of the lightning rod had far-reaching consequences, not only in religious but also in aesthetic terms. Men’s newly gained mastery of celestial fire made it possible to revel and enjoy the incalculable and majestic forces of nature. As lightning was no longer seen as a sign of divine wrath, artists started to …...

Beyond the Water’s Edge: Charting a New Course for America?

Townhall on U.S. Domestic Division & International Influence

Dec 12, 2024, 7:30 pm - 8:45 pm

Please note: this event starts at 7.30pm. The visiting address of the venue is located at Kruithuisstraat 25 (see map below), which is not the regular entrance to the museum. Join the John Adams Institute and Room for Discussion to dive headfirst into the implications of a second Trump administration. Themes like “restoring America’s greatness” …...

Demons and Thunder

By Jan Wim Buisman

October 31, 2024

Enlightened Protestants and Catholics both wanted to liberate simple folk from ignorance, fear, and superstition by good instruction. In enlightened eyes, fear of thunderstorms was not only evidence of a wrong understanding of God, but also the chief cause of the origin and spread of all kinds of superstitious ideas and practices. A particular source …...

Religious Reactions to Thunderstorms

By Jan Wim Buisman

October 24, 2024

That God addresses people directly in thunder and lightning was a generally accepted idea in the religious mentality of the sixteenth-, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century West. That notion of the immediate and clearly audible presence of the Almighty could have extreme consequences. In certain circles it came to be regarded as disrespectful to eat, work, or …...

A New Invention: Franklin and the Netherlands

By Jan Wim Buisman

October 17, 2024

Benjamin Franklin visited the Dutch Republic on two occasions. When he and his son William travelled in the Austrian Netherlands and the Dutch Republic in August and September 1761, they made certain to visit the great scholar Petrus van Musschenbroek in Leiden. This professor, whose consequential invention of the Leyden jar in 1746 was mentioned …...

Lightning, Volcanism, and Earthquakes

By Jan Wim Buisman

October 10, 2024

This year, Iceland once again proved itself to be a volcanic island: on February 8, 2024 several volcanoes started to produce huge eruptions. Perhaps the most famous outburst was that of June 8, 1783, when the Laki volcanic fissure erupted. It was the start of an eight-month-long series of violent explosions which threw up such …...

Hate in the Homeland with Cynthia Miller-Idriss

The Fate of Democracy in a Radicalizing World

Oct 15, 2024, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

“What would it take to ensure that everyone feels at home in the country where they live? Who gets to claim membership in, or ownership of, imagined and real territories? Can homelands help us better understand the rise of the far right and its move from the fringes to the mainstream?” We live in a …...

Wandering Stars with Tommy Orange

Native American Literature and Representation

Sep 26, 2024, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

“I don’t think stories were made to comfort. I believed what my father told me. Stories do more than comfort. They take you away and bring you back better made.” The John Adams Institute is honored to welcome Native American novelist Tommy Orange back to Amsterdam for his highly anticipated second book, Wandering Stars. Orange …...

Ivo Daalder

On 75 years of NATO and the Transatlantic Bond

Sep 16, 2024, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

In Washington D.C. this July, NATO celebrated its 75th anniversary. With war raging on its Eastern front since 2022, and a potential conflict with China in the Indo-Pacific, NATO faces immense challenges. But these tribulations – looming conflict, a polluted global information ecosystem, threats posed by terrorism and even climate change – are also opportunities …...

President’s Night 2024

America Votes

Nov 05, 2024, 7:00 pm - 5:00 am

Who will be the president of the United States for the next four years? This question is more relevant than ever in these turbulent geopolitical times. On November 5th, the American people will decide the course of their divided nation in an unstable world. Will Donald Trump get a second chance, or will Kamala Harris …...

When Did It All Begin?

by Jaap Jacobs

May 27, 2024

It seems a simple enough question: when was New York founded? So when and how should we celebrate or commemorate it? As we come to the end of this blog series, Jaap Jacobs takes a look at previous commemorations of Dutch-American friendship. An exploration of what shaped these events leads to the question of how …...

USA Trivia Night

brought to you by the Young Minds Network

Jun 27, 2024, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

What is General Sherman, and in which national park could you find it? What American football team does Taylor Swift’s latest boyfriend play for? And what was the role of a conductor in the Underground Railroad? Break out your atlases, history books and encyclopedias! It’s time to dust off your knowledge of American music, popular …...

Allende

By Nicola Moscelli

May 9, 2024

“We were eating at Los Compadres, and two guys came in. We could tell they weren’t from here. They looked different. They were kids – 18 to 20 years old. They ordered fifty hamburgers to go. That’s when we figured something was going on, and we decided we’d better get home.” — Guadalupe García, retired …...

What it is Like to Do Journalism in Tijuana

By Nicola Moscelli

May 2, 2024

There is a magazine based in Tijuana that is printed north of the border, in the San Diego area, and then distributed south of the border in the major cities of Baja California. This has nothing to do with printing convenience or quality, but rather with avoiding reprisals from organized crime. Its name is Zeta …...

Recollections and Reconnections: War History as Family History

By Eline Hopperus Buma

May 1, 2024

During the Second World War, a Dutch-Jewish family had to go into hiding to avoid deportation to Germany. When the war was over, they emigrated to the United States. Almost eighty years later, they remain in contact with the Dutch families that helped them survive. Eline Hopperus Buma reveals how the war created a tale …...

The Alamo, Santa Anna and the Chewing Gum

By Nicola Moscelli

April 25, 2024

“Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway.” – John Wayne, American actor In 1836, the Alamo Mission in San Antonio (Texas) was the theater of a furious and tragic battle between Texan rebels and the Mexican regular army in the context of Texas’ secession from Mexico. That battle is remembered in US …...

A Netherworld in Brownsville

By Nicola Moscelli

April 18, 2024

“I was very angry. How can they do that? How is that possible in the United States that they can do this, put up a fence in front of our land, and then keep us in here? You know, lock us in?” — D’Ann Loop, American farmer and land owner beyond the border fence in …...

Lionel Shriver, American Contrarian

On her latest book 'Mania'

May 08, 2024, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

In her latest novel, Mania, iconoclastic author Lionel Shriver investigates the fallout around the fictional 2011 “Mental Parity Movement” in the United States in an alternative yet all too recognizable near past. Dubbed the “last great Civil Rights fight” by its progenitors, Americans now embrace the sacred, universal truth that there is no such thing …...

Itchy Trigger Fingers in Ambos Nogales

By Nicola Moscelli

April 11, 2024

August 27, 1918 Your name is Zeferino Gil Lamadrid, a well-known Mexican carpenter from Nogales, Sonora. It is about 4 PM on an unbearably hot summer day, and you are finally heading back home from some business on the other side of the border with a bulky package under your arm. For you – and …...

Sight, Sound, Touch, and Taste: Africans Sensing the Dutch in New Netherland

By Lavada Nahon

March 27, 2024

In early New Netherland and New Amsterdam new arrivals, Black and white, tried to recreate the world they had left. As historical sources are scarce and incomplete, historical interpreter and culinary historian Lavada Nahon uses deep empathy and imagination to depict the sensory world of the enslaved. It is easy to put the Africans on …...

American Sonnets for my Past and Future Assassin

Poetics and Politics with Poet Terrance Hayes

May 27, 2024, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

I lock you in an American sonnet that is part prison, / Part panic closet, in a little room in a house set aflame … I lock your persona in a dream-inducing sleeper hold / While your better selves watch from the bleachers. In 70 poems Terrance Hayes explores the meanings of America, of assassin, …...

Yaël Eisenstat: Democracy’s Cyber Defendant

Polarization, Elections and AI

Apr 23, 2024, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

In 2018, Yaël Eisenstat joined Facebook as the head of Global Elections Integrity for political ads. Six months later, she left, disappointed and disillusioned, exposing how Facebook profits financially from voter manipulation. In her talk at the John Adams Institute, she will be addressing the outsized and worrisome role that social media and artificial intelligence …...

Hurley and its History: Historical Views Changing over Time

By Bas Blokker

February 20, 2024

Travelling from Washington D.C. to Milwaukee, Dutch journalist Bas Blokker makes a stop-over in Hurley, N.Y., and discovers its Dutch history. His curiousity is piqued and he dives into the past to find the nineteenth-century views of the Dutch colonizers very different from modern ones. During the last five years, I always crossed the Susquehanna …...

Dublin by John Johansen, 1957

By David B. Peterson

February 15, 2024

Designed in 1957 and opened to the public on St. Patrick’s Day 1964, John Johansen’s US Embassy in Dublin was the last of the midcentury modern embassies to be constructed under the State Department’s modernist initiative — and it was almost never built. By the early 1960’s, the embassy program had come under increasing political …...

Jennifer Carlson: Democracy by Bullet?

Merchants of the Right

Mar 28, 2024, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

Gun sellers aren’t just merchants of guns but are also agents of conservative politics and ideals. That’s because gun sales in America aren’t only an economic exchange, but also a cultural one, with serious implications for society at large. In Merchants of the Right: Gun Sellers and the Crisis of American Democracy, Jennifer Carlson’s warning …...

Oslo & London by Eero Saarinen, 1955 & 1956

By David B. Peterson

February 8, 2024

Eero Saarinen’s involvement in the modernist embassy program is a rare instance of continuity across a significant change of leadership in the Foreign Buildings Office that began under the Eisenhower administration. Saarinen’s design for Oslo exemplifies the International Style minimalism of the program in its early stages. His design for London demonstrates the shift towards …...

Athens by Walter Gropius, 1956

By David B. Peterson

February 1, 2024

As one of the key modernist enemies of the Nazi Party, the selection of Walter Gropius to design the US Embassy in Athens was a pairing of architect with location that was rich with Cold War significance. In 1919, Gropius founded the Bauhaus, which quickly became an epicenter of the modernist movement in Germany’s Zwischenkriegszeit …...

Back to the Wild West with Kenneth Manusama

Rights, Racism and Religion

Mar 05, 2024, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

On Super Tuesday, the most important day of the American primaries, the John Adams Institute is doing a deep dive into the weaknesses and instabilities of America’s democratic system. As November’s elections loom, legal, racial, and religious controversies are already stretching the country to a breaking point. Yes, of course there will be plenty of …...

New Delhi by Edward Durell Stone, 1954

By David B. Peterson

January 25, 2024

Edward Durell Stone’s US Embassy in New Delhi was among the most widely celebrated of any of the modernist projects built by the State Department during the Cold War. Frank Lloyd Wright hailed Stone’s design, describing it as “one of the finest buildings of the last 100 years, and the only embassy to do credit …...

The Dutch Republic through Bostonian Eyes

By Sander Rooijakkers

January 23, 2024

In the first quarter of the eighteenth century, two young travelers from Boston made trips to the Dutch Republic. One was from Boston stock, the other a Dutch New Yorker, born in Albany. They visited the same sites and wrote about their experiences, but their views are quite different. In the eighteenth century, countless young …...

The Hague by Marcel Breuer, 1956

By David B. Peterson

January 18, 2024

On March 3, 1945, Allied forces undertook an aerial bombardment of the Nazi-occupied Hague. The bombs missed their strategic military targets, landing instead in the historic heart of the city. The sophisticated Hôtel Paulez, which had stood at the intersection of Lange Voorhout and Korte Voorhout since the 1880s, was completely destroyed in the bombing. …...

Rio de Janeiro and Havana by Harrison & Abramovitz, 1948 and 1950

By David B. Peterson

January 11, 2024

Following the Second World War, the United States embarked on a decades-long building program to construct foreign embassies in 25 countries around the world in an effort to contain the threat to democracy posed by the Soviet Union and communism. After the Soviet Union successfully conducted a nuclear weapons test in 1949, surprising the international …...

A Sabre for Eisenhower: Forging Transatlantic Bonds for the Twentieth Century

Jorrit Steehouder

December 18, 2023

Using a royal gift as a starting point, Jorrit Steehouder shows how ties between the United States and the Netherlands were forged through rituals and symbols, as well as through personal friendships. On October 14th, 1947, a crisp and sunny autumn day, General Dwight D. Eisenhower celebrated his 57th birthday in style. At the Dutch …...

Tiya Miles: All That She Carried

The remarkable history of Ashley’s Sack

Jun 17, 2024, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

“In a display case in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture sits a rough cotton bag. “Ashley’s Sack” is embroidered with a handful of words that evoke a sweeping family story of loss and love passed down through the generations.” In South Carolina in the 1850s, an enslaved woman named Rose …...

Thomas Paine’s Radical Plan for Ending Slavery in 1775

By Eli Merritt

November 30, 2023

In my preceding essay, “The ‘Survivalist Interpretation’ of Slavery”–based on the findings of my book Disunion Among Ourselves: The Perilous Politics of the American Revolution–I lay out three paradigms for understanding why the founders of the United States did virtually nothing during the nine years of the American Revolution to put an end to the …...

Wilhelmina Douglas Hawley and the artists’ colony in Rijsoord

by Alexandra van Dongen

November 23, 2023

Stories handed down through the generations have a powerful impact. Alexandra van Dongen was always fascinated by the life of her American great-grandmother, an artist who eventually settled in the Netherlands. But Alexandra’s pursuit deepened when she unearthed her ancestor’s passion for an even earlier ancestor, whose actions in the nineteenth century speak to issues …...

The ‘Survivalist Interpretation’ of Slavery

By Eli Merritt

November 23, 2023

My book Disunion Among Ourselves: The Perilous Politics of the American Revolution tells the story of regional conflict and disunionist crisis in the Continental Congress from 1774, when delegates from the colonies first gathered to protest the deplorable Intolerable Acts, until 1783, when the Treaty of Paris finally secured independence and ended the war. What …...

Franklin Foer

On Joe Biden’s White House and the Struggle for America’s Future

Jan 31, 2024, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

“On January 20, 2021, standing where two weeks earlier police officers battled right-wing paramilitaries, Joe Biden took his oath of office. Faced with unprecedented crises, he decided not to play defense. Instead, he set out to transform the nation”. From author and The Atlantic staff writer Franklin Foer comes a gripping biography of Joe Biden, …...

How to Avert Disunion and Civil War, According to John Adams

By Eli Merritt

November 16, 2023

Conventional wisdom prescribes that the first eighty-five years of American history took place in phases: Phase 1, white male harmony and heroism during the founding and federalist periods; Phase 2, the growth and spread of slavery and disruption of the founding harmony; and Phase 3, disunion sparking the Civil War, followed by the restoration of …...

Why George Washington became Commander-in-Chief

By Eli Merritt

November 9, 2023

According to more than two centuries of conventional history written about the grandeur and glory of George Washington of Virginia, the Continental Congress of 1775 “unanimously” elected him as commander-in-chief of the new American army for his celebrated qualities of moral steeliness, selflessness in the execution of civic duty, and courage under fire. While this …...

The United States’ First Secession Threat

By Eli Merritt

November 2, 2023

By conventional wisdom, the United States’ first serious threat of secession did not strike until the Nullification Crisis of 1832-1833, when South Carolina menaced disunion over what many Southerners described as the federal government’s “Tariff of Abominations.” They viewed the tariff as both oppressive to the Southern economy of staple export crops––and flatly unconstitutional. In …...

‘I, too, sing America’

By Ted Rosengarten

October 26, 2023

Children’s picture and chapter books make up thirty percent of banned books. In one fell swoop, a school district in Pennsylvania banished fifty books from lower and middle school grades on the grounds that the books’ donor “uses Marxist critical race theory.” A parent demurred, saying he had read some of the books and found …...

Fellow Founding Fathers: Gijsbert Karel van Hogendorp and Thomas Jefferson

By Lauren Lauret

October 25, 2023

The American Revolution had a significant impact on the Dutch Republic. The end of the eighteenth century was marked by a spirited exchange of ideas on liberty, political rights and state-building between the two Republics. But it was not merely ideas which travelled freely. People from both sides of the Atlantic sailed across the ocean …...

Critical Race Theory under Scrutiny

By Ted Rosengarten

October 19, 2023

Not only were African people enslaved, their history has been enslaved as well. Books by Black authors that espouse a Black perspective on history and current events are being ferociously targeted for removal from American schools and libraries. Allied with and even led by governors and legislatures in states that in the past resisted integrating …...

Stamped from the Beginning

Ibram X. Kendi (the book) and Roger Ross Williams (the film)

Nov 13, 2023, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

“Time and again, racist ideas have not been cooked up from the boiling pot of ignorance and hate. Time and again, powerful and brilliant men and women have produced racist ideas in order to justify the racist policies of their era and redirect the blame onto Black people.” In his book Stamped from the Beginning, …...

“Bring Me the Cotton!”

By Ted Rosengarten

October 12, 2023

Following the American Civil War, landowners in the deep South did not want to pay for what they had always had for free—the labor of the people they had held in slavery. In cotton-growing states like Alabama, hundreds of thousands of freed people agreed to work on the land owned by their former masters in …...

1619 – No Going Back

By Ted Rosengarten

October 5, 2023

We will never know which ancestors of Nate Shaw were kidnapped in Africa and forcibly taken across the Atlantic, and when. But the first episode of enslavement in North America has been widely acknowledged in recent years. It was an English privateer, The White Lion, under a Dutch contract and sailing under a Dutch flag, …...

From ‘All God’s Dangers’ to ‘De kleur van katoen’

By Frans Kooymans

September 28, 2023

In the spring of 1975, while visiting a bookstore in Miami, I found myself drawn to the self-assured look of a Black man on the cover of a book entitled All God’s Dangers. I bought the book and over the next couple of weeks I was struck by the narrator’s unique language and the succession …...

American Mass Culture and the Roaring Twenties in the Netherlands

by Kees Wouters

September 25, 2023

During the 1920s, the Netherlands excelled in dullness, it is said. But Kees Wouters shows how the cobwebs of pillarized society were blown away by a new musical wind from the West: Jazz! Exalted by many, villified by others, Dutch musicians playing American jazz conquered music halls and radiowaves alike and even made the Dutch …...

Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution Lonnie G. Bunch III

Living with history: A people’s journey, a nation’s story

Oct 18, 2023, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

“Museums have a social justice role to play. Cultural institutions need to be as much about today and tomorrow as they are about yesterday. This may just be a time of transformation.” Lonnie G. Bunch III is the 14th Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, the highest position of leadership within the world’s largest museum, education, …...

The Origin of ‘All God’s Dangers’

By Frans Kooymans

September 21, 2023

All God’s Dangers, in translation De kleur van katoen, is the autobiography of Nate Shaw, an illiterate Black tenant farmer from Alabama, who grew up in the society of former slaves and slaveholders and reached maturity during the advent of Jim Crow, the segregation laws that held the Deep South in their grip for nearly …...

Miriam Toews

On Film and Literature

Nov 28, 2023, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

Miriam Toews is the award-winning author of nine books, including Women Talking, which won the Oscar for best adapted screenplay at the 2023 Academy Awards, and All My Puny Sorrows. Known for her light, oftentimes humorous touch, Toews finds moments of brightness and humanity in even the darkest of narratives. Her latest novel, Fight Night, …...

Walter Isaacson on Elon Musk

Innovation and the Demons that Drive it

Nov 24, 2023, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

Isaacson’s latest inside story is filled with tales of triumph and turmoil, and addresses the question: are the demons that drive Musk also what it takes to drive innovation and progress? Walter Isaacson is the bestselling biographer of the likes of Steve Jobs, Henry Kissinger, and Jennifer Doudna. Throughout his career he has served as …...

Lady Liberty as Muse

By Annejet van der Zijl

August 22, 2023

The United States of America and the Netherlands are a rich source of inspiration to Dutch and American writers. The American journalist Russell Shorto found the origins of American tolerance in the histories of Amsterdam and New Amsterdam. Vice versa, Annejet van der Zijl, a Dutch author, found her muse in the United States, as …...

The Ministry for the Future

Kim Stanley Robinson and the Fight for Planet Earth

Nov 08, 2023, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

“In the twenty-first century it became clear that the planet was incapable of sustaining everyone alive at Western levels, and at that point the richest pulled away into their fortress mansions and bolted their doors to wait it out until some poorly theorized better time… beyond that, après moi le déluge.” Uniting science and politics, …...

Strangers to Ourselves

Mental Health, Diagnosis & Identity with Rachel Aviv

Sep 18, 2023, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

“The divide between the psychic hinterlands and a setting we might call normal is permeable, a fact that is both haunting and promising. It’s startling to realize how narrowly we avoid, or miss, living radically different lives.” How do we understand ourselves in periods of crisis and distress? Such moments – familiar to any life …...

Edward Winslow: Anglo-Dutch-American Pilgrim

By Jeremy D. Bangs

June 20, 2023

The early history of the Dutch in America is not confined to the Hudson River and the surrounding areas, but extends deep into New England. In 1620 a group of settlers from Leiden journeyed across the Atlantic to settle in North America. They are often overlooked in surveys of Dutch-American relations, because their history does …...

Eternal City

By Mieke Bleeker

June 15, 2023

Democratic icon, advocate for liberty, equality, freedom of speech and religion, principal author of the Declaration of Independence: as one of the Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson seems to be larger than life in the American psyche. So it’s no surprise then, that the memorial for the third president of the United State resembles the Pantheon …...

Temple of Justice

By Mieke Bleeker

June 8, 2023

In 1932, at the laying of the cornerstone of what was to become the US Supreme Court building, Chief Justice Hughes said: “The Republic endures and this is the symbol of its faith.” And faith they had needed, as it took 146 years for the US Supreme Court to have its own building. Up until …...

Belonging to the Ages

By Mieke Bleeker

June 1, 2023

Only six days after the surrender of the Confederate Army which meant an end to the Civil War, John Wilkes Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln while attending Ford’s Theatre in Washington DC on April 14, 1865. As the news spread, the first reaction of most Americans was disbelief and shock, which turned into grief once Lincoln’s …...

Grandeur for the Greatest

By Mieke Bleeker

May 25, 2023

The Washington Monument is an iconic structure, built to honor the first president of the United States, George Washington. But why is it shaped like an ancient Egyptian obelisk? Although the obelisk was always part of the plan for the monument, the original design by Robert Mill looked very different. It seems to have been …...

Architecture of Power

By Mieke Bleeker

May 18, 2023

“There is but one way for the moderns to become great, and perhaps unequalled … by imitating the ancients.” German historian Johann Winckelmann (1755) No one took this more to heart than Pierre L’Enfant. With Rome in mind, his design for Washington DC contained monumental buildings like the White House and the US Capitol connected …...

Rising from the Ashes: The Afterlife of a Phoenix

by Joske Meerdink

May 17, 2023

During a late evening walk, journalist Joske Meerdink decided to turn right and go across the local graveyard. It lead to an unexpected find that sets off a voyage of discovery, taking Joske across the Atlantic. As she pieced together the story of a group of nineteenth-century Dutch migrants from the village of Winterswijk in …...

Nikole Hannah-Jones: 1619

A New American Origin Story

Jun 28, 2023, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

“In August of 1619, a ship carrying more than 20 enslaved Africans arrived in the English colony of Virginia. America was not yet America, but this was the moment it began.” Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones has devoted her career to exposing systemic and institutional racism in the United States. Chief among her …...

How to Shape a Capital

By Mieke Bleeker

May 11, 2023

1790, Philadelphia. In the temporary capital of the United States, President George Washington must make an important decision. The War of Independence has been over for several years, and the new Constitution requires the government to establish a federal territory for the nation’s capital. But representatives from the north and the south have been bickering …...

USA Trivia Night

How much do you know about America?

Jun 13, 2023, 7:30 pm - 9:30 pm

Who was the 6th president of the United States? Who performed the halftime show at the Superbowl this year? And when we speak of the Trail of Tears, what precisely are we referring to? Break out your atlases, history books and encyclopedias! Dust off your knowledge of American music, popular culture, history and current events! …...

Matthew Desmond

Poverty, by America

Jun 08, 2023, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

“Are we—we the secure, the insured, the housed, the college educated, the lucky—connected to all this needless suffering? This is a book about poverty that is not just about the poor. Instead, it’s a book about how some lives are made small so that others may grow.” Pulitzer Prize winning sociologist Matthew Desmond’s work on …...

Jane Addams and Aletta Jacobs at the Women’s Congress in The Hague

By Mineke Bosch

April 18, 2023

Social activism and the struggle for women’s suffrage in the early twentieth century brought together women from countries around the world, including the United States and the Netherlands. Mineke Bosch highlights how shared issues fostered a deep friendship between the American Jane Addams and the Dutch Aletta Jacobs. Berlin, May 1915. Three feminists on an …...

Sojourner Truth

By Jeroen Dewulf

March 21, 2023

How the Enslaved Woman of a Dutch-New York Family Became an Icon of America’s Black Liberation Movement On 31 March 1817 the New York legislature decided that enslavement within its borders had to come to an end. Final emancipation would occur on 4 July 1827. Coincidentally, the date of choice was almost exactly two centuries …...

Competition: Life on the Road

By Doug Hancock

March 16, 2023

There are hundreds of rodeo arenas built on the edges of small towns throughout the midwest. Amongst them even more less formal ranch rodeos where riders prove their ranch skills to their peers. Since its formation in 1976, the INFR (Indian National Finals Rodeo) has provided safe platforms for animals and riders throughout North America …...

Landscape: Loss & Healing

By Doug Hancock

March 9, 2023

Life on the reservations is tough for many and for different reasons. Generational trauma and isolation can mean that making a living is difficult but people do what they can. They are used to finding ways to cope. Donnie Shockey Two Bulls, a veteran marine and ex-police officer, set up a stall to sell jewelry …...

First Nations Relay Racing: All Aboard the Sioux Express

By Doug Hancock

March 2, 2023

First Nations Relay Racing has its own traditions and is a separate special event outside of the usual rodeo circuits. Fast-paced and demanding impeccable horse skills, it is hugely popular on and off reservations. A relay team has four members, a rider, a mugger, a set-up man, and the backholder. Between them they ensure that …...

Immigration, Transformation and Society

Theater & Talk

Apr 24, 2023, 7:00 pm - 10:00 pm

What makes up the immigrant experience? What are its contours, challenges and realities? And what gets lost, altered, or edited in the transition between leaving one’s birth country and arriving in a new one? The John Adams Institute is thrilled to present an evening that weaves arts and academics, traverses national boundaries, and crosses oceans, …...

Pageantry: Miss and lil’ Miss Rodeo Queens

By Doug Hancock

February 23, 2023

Every Pine Ridge rodeo begins with experienced horse women entering the arena proudly bearing the flags of the nations they ride for, the Oglala Lakota Nation and the United States of America. While female bull riders are rare, women do compete fiercely in the challenges that put ranching skills to the test. The 2022 – …...

New York Burning

John Adams & Fulbright event with Jill Lepore

Apr 20, 2023, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

New York City, 1741: Fires break out throughout the city. Public and private property is set ablaze, and the ruling elite is nervous. There are whispers of a coup, or worse, an outright rebellion. But the perpetrators of the crimes lurk in the shadows, and so, fueled by the paranoia that accompanies hearsay, the authorities …...

Growing Up Dutch in Iowa

By Valerie Van Kooten

February 19, 2023

What does it mean to be of Dutch extraction in the United States? Pella, situated on the Iowa plains, was the destination of choice for hundreds of Dutch families, led by Hendrick Pieter Scholte, after the Afscheiding (Secession) of 1834 split the Dutch Reformed Church. What is still Dutch and what has changed over time? …...

Three Mile Creek Rodeo School

By Doug Hancock

February 16, 2023

It’s easy to think that rodeos are all about those terrifying, bone-shaking seconds in the arena but there’s a huge amount of preparation that goes into becoming a bull and bronc rider, and there are many other tests of skill on display at rodeos too. Not all of which can be learned ranching. In this …...

Powwow and Rodeo

By Doug Hancock

February 9, 2023

In rural areas, where people can live in isolation much of the time, Agricultural fairs have long been important social opportunities. First Nations communities quickly saw them as one of the few legal ways to gather and preserve cultural expressions, which had been forbidden by settlers. As First Nations communities fought back against oppression and …...

The Dutch-American Perspective

By Russell Shorto

January 18, 2023

The work that historians do influences their lives, especially if they spend a considerable time in a foreign land that they write about. Slowly, their topic of choice becomes an essential part of their identity. Russell Shorto, a renowned writer of narrative history, writes about his own evolution at the intersection of Dutch-American history. This …...

Mark Rutte visits President Biden

January 18, 2023

On January 17th, the Dutch prime minister met in Washington D.C. with President Biden. Mark Rutte discussed the situation in Ukraine, and how to strenghten global alliances....

Rachelle Meyer in the Austin Chronicle

December 30, 2022

Cartoonist and Texpat Rachelle Meyer keeps the Southern tradition alive in Amsterdam with this illustrated history of a black-eyed pea party published in The Austin Chronicle. In 2019, she created a blog series for the John Adams based on her Faces on the...

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The Pont acquires work by American artist Aria Dean

December 27, 2022

Museum The Pont in Tilburg recently acquired GUT PUNCH/Little Island v.1 (1.1), 2022, a sculpture by American artist Aria Dean. She's regarded as one of the promises of American art. Her work is influenced by developments in digital culture and she manifests herself on various platforms...
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De Correspondent on Invisible Child

December 22, 2022

De Correspondent published an extensive article (in Dutch) about Invisible Child, the book by New York Times journalist Andrea Elliott about a homeless family in New York City. Elliott, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her work, joined the John Adams last October. Click ...
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Merz Trio performs in the Netherlands

December 20, 2022

The American-Australian Merz Trio have been lauded for their stunning virtuosity and fresh and surprising interpretations. In the beginning of the new year, they will perform at several Dutch music venues. Click here for dates and tickets (picture by Dario Acosta/Modern White)....
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Joseph Stiglitz on inflation

December 19, 2022

The pandemic and war, not government spending, caused inflation, according to Nobel Prize Winner Joseph Stiglitz. A new paper by Stiglitz (and Ira Regmi) for The Intercept has huge implications for everything about who holds power in American life. Stiglitz spoke at the John Adams several times. Visit our library or ...
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The Adventures of Gerrit Boon and Jan Lincklaen

by Jaap Jacobs

December 15, 2022

The Holland Land Company is known for its role in settling the western part of upstate New York by acquiring land grants and selling off lots to prospective settlers in the early nineteenth century. Yet its activities in the last decade of the eighteenth century were of a different nature, as the stories of …...
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EYE discovers 1898 film of Mardi Grass

December 15, 2022

After decades of searching, a 1898 film of New Orleans Mardi Gras was discovered in the archives of the Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam. Believed to be the oldest film of New Orleans, the roughly two-minute movie shows both long-held traditions of the parade and rituals that have been changed or forgotten....
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“Tell me where it hurts”

By Pia de Jong

December 15, 2022

I must have picked it up just before leaving the US. Maybe that last day when I drove away from my home and, somewhat teary-eyed, waved at my friends standing in the driveway. But there it was when I set foot in Schiphol airport. Hello cough, hello headache, hello lousiness. I went straight to my …...
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How Are You?

By Pia de Jong

December 8, 2022

It took me a while to get used to the song and dance of greeting in the USA, that ritual seemingly as superficial as a thin layer of oil on deep water. It often takes the form of a countrywide, four-sentence conversation with carefully scripted words, starting with a standard question, followed by an answer …...
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Banned Books Course

December 6, 2022

Book challenges in America aren’t new — but over the past year, they’ve reached a fever pitch. Want to know more about the why and how? Register for our Banned Books Course by New York Times journalist and author Nina Siegal, starting in January 2023....
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The Naked Truth

By Pia de Jong

December 1, 2022

Being naked in public, Americans are taught at an early age, is a big no-no, even, or maybe especially, at the beach. I was once reprimanded for letting my baby daughter and toddler sons play in their birthday suits on a remote strip at a deserted beach. But lo and behold, a man wearing a …...
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Roe v. Wade podcast wins Apple Award

November 30, 2022

Slate’s podcast series Slow Burn about Roe v. Wade won the 2022 Apple Podcasts Award. The four-episode season explores the events leading up to the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision. Host Susan Matthews will join the John Adams for a free livestream about the podcast on December 15th. ...
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ITA: Lehman Trilogy

November 29, 2022

ITA present Lehman Trilogy, a three-act play by Italian novelist and playwright Stefano Massini. It follows the lives of three immigrant brothers as they arrive in America and found an investment firm, the collapse of their company in 2008 and the financial crisis which followed. Click here for dates and tickets....
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Paradise Lost

By Pia de Jong

November 24, 2022

America always held some magic for me. Even as a child, I knew things happened in that vast country on the other side of the ocean. Interesting things somehow reached my small village in the south of the Netherlands: a LIFE magazine picture of a dashing young John F. Kennedy; a movie poster of Rosemary’s …...
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Thank You for Your Servitude

With Mark Leibovich

Mar 15, 2023, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

In his second nonfiction blockbuster Thank You for Your Servitude: Donald Trump’s Washington and the Price of Submission, journalist and political commentator Mark Leibovich sketches the political landscape of Washington during the Trump presidency. Against the backdrop of steak dinners and chants to “drain the swamp”, Leibovich describes the rapid change of the Republican party …...
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MATRIX

An Evening with Lauren Groff

Feb 23, 2023, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

“She rides out of the forest alone. Seventeen years old, in the cold March drizzle, Marie who comes from France.” Rising American literary star Lauren Groff’s most recent novel inhabits the borderlands between myth and history. Set in the early Middle Ages, Matrix is a mystical exploration of the raw power of female creativity in …...
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Exhibition Judith Joy Ross

November 23, 2022

This autumn, Fotomuseum Den Haag presents the largest survey to date of Judith Joy Ross, regarded as one of the greatest portrait photographers in America. The exhibition features a selection of more than 150 prints, drawn from the photographer’s archive of work over the past fifty years. Opens at Nov 26....
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Bret Easton Ellis

The Shards

Jan 30, 2023, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

“Many years ago, I realized that a book – a novel – asks itself to be written in the same way we fall in love with someone. The book becomes impossible to resist for the author: there’s nothing you can do about it, and you finally give in and succumb, even if your instincts tell you to run the other way because this could be, in the end, a dangerous game.”...
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On the First Dutch Translation of the U.S. Constitution

By Michael Douma

November 21, 2022

There are a few topics that guarantee a historian an audience. Write a decent biography of Abraham Lincoln or James Madison, for example, and you are bound to have readers. Or, write something new and interesting about the Constitution and you might attract some attention. I began studying the Dutch in America over 20 years …...
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Film Adaption of ‘She Said’

November 17, 2022

She Said, an American drama film based on the book of the same name by New York Times journalists Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey will hit the screen. this month. Their book exposed Harvey Weinstein's history of abuse and sexual misconduct against women. Megan Twohey visited the John Adams in 2019....
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Goodbye to All That

By Pia de Jong

November 17, 2022

My family and I lived in the United States of America for ten years. I vividly remember the hot summer day we arrived. The taxi driver, an elegant man in his sixties picked us up at Newark Airport. Isn’t it strange the things we notice in the first moment of being somewhere new? The air-conditioning …...
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Jong Atlantici discuss the Midterms

November 16, 2022

On November 23rd, the Jong Atlantici will host an event about the results of the Midterms and what it means for the future and the elections in 2024 (in Dutch). Moderator Laila Frank will also share her experiences of her recent visits to the United States....
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Livestream: AAF on the Midterms

November 12, 2022

On Nov 17th, The Antwerp America Foundation will host an online conversation with political top analyst Stan Veuger. Live from Washington DC, Veuger will offer a unique insight into the political ins and outs of Washington DC. Click here for more info and to register....
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New visitor center Margraten

November 3, 2022

The American Battle Monuments Commission (AMBC) Netherlands American Cemetery will soon unveil a new visitor center in Margraten, Netherlands, highlighting the 77-year-old site’s rich history and unique relationship with the local Dutch community....
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Jill Lepore on the US Constitution

October 27, 2022

The inability to change the US Constitution, America’s most important document, is deforming our politics and government, argues ...
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ITA: Lehman Trilogy

October 26, 2022

ITA present Lehman Trilogy, a three-act play by Italian novelist and playwright Stefano Massini. It follows the lives of three immigrant brothers as they arrive in America and found an investment firm, the collapse of their company in 2008 and the financial crisis which followed. Click here for dates and tickets....
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Exhibition: Spencer Tunick

October 26, 2022

Reflex Amsterdam Gallery presents a exhibition by American photographer Spencer Tunick. With Public Interventions, the gallery shows new work by the visual artist, who is known worldwide for his colossal nude photography and human installations in urban and natural settings. On view until 7 Nov, 2022....
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Historical marker for John Quincy Adams

October 20, 2022

On Oct 19th, the city of Leiden placed a historical marker on the house where John Quincy Adams lived. He was the son of John Adams, and became the sixth president of the United States. When John Adams arrived in the Dutch Republic as the American envoy, he was accompanied by his two sons who both studied at Leiden University....
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USA Session at CreativeNL LIVE

October 19, 2022

CreativeNL is hosting a 4-day festival throughout Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven. It focuses on innovation, circular and spatial design, and immersive content. On Oct 25, there is a USA-session where several key players from the Dutch creative industry, active in the US, will share their insights on developments and collaboration....
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Johnny goes Dutch

by Jaap Jacobs

October 18, 2022

When John Adams arrived in the Dutch Republic as the American envoy, he was accompanied by his two sons. They were both expected to attend school so as to further their education, but finding the right place turned out to be a bit of a problem. Johnny may have only been twelve years old, but …...
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Roe v. Wade: Past, Present, and Future

Online Event with Susan Matthews

Dec 15, 2022, 8:00 pm - 9:00 pm

You can join this online event for free. Click HERE for link to the livestream. On 24 June 2022, the Supreme Court made the shocking decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Responses ranged from despairing to triumphant. For decades, Roe v. Wade had guaranteed the constitutional rights of women to get safe abortions. It was …...
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US Ambassador Belgium at AAF

October 1, 2022

On October 6th, the Antwerp America Foundation offers you the opportunity to meet the new American ambassador in Belgium. Michael Adler will talk about Belgian-American relations and about the new role of the US in a rapidly changing world. Click here for more info....
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International Bond Sales After the American Civil War

By David K. Thomson

September 29, 2022

In the aftermath of a war that took the lives of 750,000 Americans and wounded more than a million others, there emerged a new chapter for American finance. New York City and investment banking entered a new era following the war and in part foreshadowed the world it would become by the end of the …...
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The Most Democratic Bond Issue of the War

By David K. Thomson

September 22, 2022

Following on the wild success of the 5-20 loan drive, the federal government attempted to maintain that success, but without one key person—Jay Cooke. When the question of an exclusive agency for the next major drive (the “10-40” loan, a 5% loan callable in ten years by the government that matured in forty), Jay …...
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The Tale of the White Horse: The First Slave Trading Voyage to New Netherland

By Dennis J. Maika

September 18, 2022

The first direct shipment of enslaved Africans arrived in New Amsterdam in 1655. The voyage of the White Horse came in the wake of significant changes in the Dutch Atlantic. In this blog, American historian Dennis Maika outlines how family and business connections shaped the development of a slave-trading center in Manhattan. New Amsterdam’s …...
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New US ambassador to the Netherlands

September 15, 2022

Ambassador-Designate Shefali Razdan Duggal will present her credentials to HM King Willem-Alexander on October 19. Razdan Duggal was born in India and moved with her family to the US at the age of two. She is an experienced political activist, women’s rights advocate, and human rights campaigner....
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International Bond Sales During the American Civil War

By David K. Thomson

September 15, 2022

It is a mistake to talk about the American Civil War in a vacuum. While by definition a war that was not against a foreign power, the conflict still proved of great consequence and interest around the world, but especially on the other side of the Atlantic. The power of southern cotton to fuel …...
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The Rise of Jay Cooke

By David K. Thomson

September 8, 2022

In October 1862 the federal government found itself in dire straits on virtually every front. Militarily, 1862 had been a year of mixed results. While General Ulysses S. Grant had made some headway in the Western Theater, the more high-profile Eastern Theater saw the armies of the United States government struggling. Despite being within …...
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America’s Last Chance?

2022 US Midterm Election Town Hall

Nov 10, 2022, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

2024 is a year that looms large on any American calendar. But given the political system in the United States, spectators know that November 2022, will be as important for determining the future fate of America as the next presidential election. Join us on November 10th for a town hall in collaboration with the Rode …...
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The John Adams at Podcastfestival 2022

September 6, 2022

The John Adams Institute and the Podcastfestival have joined forces for the 2022 festival edition! On September 30^th, (7.30 pm) American podcaster and radio producer Avery Trufelman will present an exclusive premiere of the upcoming episodes of her widely acclaimed podcast Articles of Interest. She will be interviewed by John Adams...
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Barbara Ehrenreich dies at 81

September 5, 2022

Barbara Ehrenreich, an author and essayist who picked apart the myths of the American Dream died Sept. 1. She was 81. In 2005 she visited the John Adams to discuss her book Nickel and Dimed - On (not) getting by in America. Click here for the video....
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‘All That Jazz’ at EYE

September 2, 2022

EYE Filmmuseum presents All that Jazz, a programme on jazz and film featuring classics, live performances and exceptional avant-garde and activist filmmakers with a passion for jazz. The program features American icons like Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Ornette Coleman and Dexter Gordon. From 9 Sept-2 Oct 2022....
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The Threat of a Thousand Dollar Breakfast

By David K. Thomson

September 1, 2022

Slavery stood at the center of the American experience prior to the Civil War. From the arrival of the first enslaved individuals in colonial Virginia in 1619, the issue of slavery gradually tore the nation apart. In particular, the nineteenth century witnessed increasing hostility between North and South over the “peculiar institution.” The volatile …...
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Exhibition ‘Floridas’

August 29, 2022

Galerie Caroline O'Breen in Amsterdam presents Floridas by American photographer Anastasia Samoylova. Her recent series documents the versatility of Florida: a political swing-state, a swampland paradise, the refuge of excess, a tourist fantasy, but also a real estate deception. From 2 Sept - 8 Oct, 2022....
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John Romeyn Brodhead’s Hunt for History

by Jaap Jacobs

August 23, 2022

Over the centuries, numerous American visitors to the Netherlands produced travel accounts, filled with their fresh insights and observations as they viewed the familiar from a foreigner’s perspective. John Romeyn Brodhead is no exception, but he was not a regular tourist. He was, or rather became, a man with a mission, hunting for history in …...
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Joanna Bryson at Brave New World

August 23, 2022

On September 12th, Joanna Bryson, an American academic recognised for broad expertise on intelligence, its nature, and its consequences will speak at Brave New World, the annual art & science conference in Leiden. Bryson advises governments, corporations, and other agencies globally, particularly on AI policy....
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Dr. Fauci to step down from government

August 23, 2022

Dr. Anthony Fauci, who played a critical role in steering humanity through the two pandemics of our time, AIDS and COVID-19, announced he is stepping down from his role in the federal government. The nation's top infectious disease expert joined the John Adams online in 2021. Click here for the video....
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Exhibition Dana Lixenberg

July 28, 2022

Dutch photographer Dana Lixenberg returns to Huis Marseille for the exhibition Polaroid 54/59/79. Hundreds of polaroids offer an insight into her photo shoots for prominent magazines and personal projects in the US. The collection reflects the American culture Lixenberg encountered in the 1990s and 2000s....
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Karen Joy Fowler on longlist Booker Prize

July 27, 2022

Karen Joy Fowler has been nominated for the Booker Prize 2022. The jury announced that her book Booth made it too the longlist. The winner will be chosen in October. Fowler will visit the John Adams on 15 September to discuss her epic tale about the Booth family. Click here for more info and tickets....
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Mass Murder on Manhattan

By Mark Meuwese

July 20, 2022

Settler colonialism is not a story of friendly relations throughout. The confrontation with an unfamiliar other creates wariness and suspicion and often leads to violent outbursts in which noncombatants become innocent victims. Manhattan in the seventeenth century was no exception, as the events of 1643 show. In the evening of February 25, 1643, soldiers and …...
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Andrea Elliott

Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City

Oct 11, 2022, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

Dasani Coates, a child with an imagination as soaring as the skyscrapers near her Brooklyn homeless shelter grew up in the shadows of New York’s second “Gilded Age.” Dasani’s story has become emblematic of one of America’s most wicked problems: homelessness. The John Adams Institute is delighted to welcome Pulitzer Prize winner Andrea Elliott, investigative …...
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Francis Fukuyama

Liberalism and its Discontents

Oct 03, 2022, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

History has not ended. In fact, it is entering yet another phase, where old forms and ideas clash with present realities. The John Adams Institute is excited to welcome Francis Fukuyama back to Amsterdam to discuss his findings in his newest book, Liberalism and Its Discontents. In this rigorous and trim volume, Fukuyama returns to …...
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Karen Joy Fowler

Booth

Sep 15, 2022, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

April 14th 1865, on the balcony of the Ford Theatre in Washington DC, John Wilkes Booth has just assassinated president Abraham Lincoln. This shocking incident would ring through history and make the Booths the most infamous family in the country. The John Adams Institute is pleased to host author and Man Booker finalist Karen Joy …...
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EYE: Sidney Portier & Denzel Washington

July 13, 2022

Sidney Poitier was Denzel Washington’s shining example. The actors were good friends, but never played in a film together. This summer, Eye brings them together on the big screen for the first time by showing the best of their films. Click here for more dates and tickets....
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NAF: Webinar on M.C. Escher

July 7, 2022

The Netherland-America Foundation is hosting a webinar on Virtual Realities: The Art of M.C. Escher. This exhibit is currently running at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. It features more than 400 prints, drawings, watercolors, sketchbooks, and the artist’s working tools. Tuesday, July 19th, at 7pm. ...
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Lessons from Dr. Anthony Fauci

June 30, 2022

The pandemic is waning, but Dr. Anthony Fauci has a few more lessons to share. In ...
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Taylor Mac at ITA

June 30, 2022

After successes in New York, London, Sydney and elsewhere, Taylor Mac is coming to ITA in Amsterdam during Pride for a special version of A 24-Decade History of Popular Music, a subjective history of America since...
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NPO 2: Documentary series ‘Tricky Dick’

June 27, 2022

NPO 2 is showing Tricky Dick, a four-part series that follows the rise and fall of Richard Nixon, also known as Tricky Dick because of his cunning tactics. Weekly from July 2nd, 11.45pm, or online. In 2019, we hosted Leon Neyfakh, whose podcast Slow Burn investigated the Watergate scandal. In 2017, Nixon's biographer ...
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Book about a American Revolution murder conspiracy

June 25, 2022

At the midpoint of the American Revolution, Bathsheba Spooner conspired to murder her patriot husband. Andrew Noone wrote a book about this murder mystery. In Bathsheba Spooner: A Revolutionary Murder Conspiracy he dives into a story of war, politics, and social status that triggered the most infamous crime of America’s 18th century....
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Paintings depicting Dutch descendants recovered

June 23, 2022

A curator and a librarian in New Paltz, N.Y., helped the F.B.I. to track down 200-year-old paintings that were stolen in 1972. ...
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RIAS: War and (Anti-)Americanism in Europe

June 22, 2022

The war in Ukraine has forced a renewal of the transatlantic partnerships while also prompting a wave of anti-Americanism in some European countries. On 24/6, the RIAS will discuss the deep-rooted historical processes that have characterized the alternate fortunes of the relationship between the US and Europe....
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New Amsterdam: What’s in A Name?

by Jaap Jacobs

June 20, 2022

The small colonial town that the Dutch founded in North America was called New Amsterdam. We now know it as New York City. The story of how the name evolved has many twists and turns and is, in fact, a tale of war and peace. New Amsterdam was the talk of the town in 1953, …...
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Fran Lebowitz at Carré

June 20, 2022

Lebowitz’s recent Netflix documentary series directed by Martin Scorsese, Pretend It’s A City, was an unmitigated hit with its offering of a tantalizing snapshot of New York, along with Lebowitz’s lively and unapologetic commentary on what it means to live there. On June 25th, Lebowitz will talk to her audience at Koninklijk Theater Carré....
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Requiem of Theresienstadt

June 18, 2022

On June 19^th, the Radio Filharmonisch Orkest will perform the concert drama Requiem of Theresienstadt, conducted and created by American conductor Murray Sidlin. It tells the story of the camp inmates in the concentration camp Theresienstadt, who performed Verdi's Requiem 16 times in 1943/44 as an act of resistance....
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Notes on Downtown

June 16, 2022

The gentrification of downtown LA and its social consequences are the subject of Notes on Downtown, a photo book by Dutch photographer Désirée van Hoek. On June 17, she will discuss her work, architecture, gentrification and homelessness with (a.o.) John Adams director Tracy Metz at Pakhuis de...
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Jill Lepore on the history of bikes

June 14, 2022

Bicycles have evolved over time. From the velocipede to the ten-speed, these innovations brought riders freedom. But in a world built for cars, life behind handlebars is both charmed and dangerous, writes historian Jill Lepore in the New Yorker. In 2019, Lepore visited the John Adams to discuss her book These Truths....
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Dutch town fights of Meta data center

June 2, 2022

In December, over the objections of many locals, the Dutch farming community of Zeewolde approved an enormous data center for Meta, ...
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Film: The Capote Tapes

May 25, 2022

Eye is showing The Capote Tapes, a reconstruction of how a novel that was meant to be Truman Capote's greatest masterpiece, sparked his downfall instead. Through never before heard audio archive and interviews with Capote's friends and enemies, this intimate documentary reveals the rise and fall of one America's most iconic writers....
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Mayken’s World

By Nicole Maskiell

May 24, 2022

On December 28, 1662, a woman named Mayken van Angola pursued freedom in New Amsterdam. She did not stand alone. Two other women—Susanna and Lucretia—stood with her and together, they petitioned the colonial government for their freedom. It was granted with the caveat that they must clean the Director General Petrus Stuyvesant’s house once a …...
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Surviving Injustice

with Mark Godsey & Rickey Jackson

Jun 14, 2022, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

Rickey Jackson was sentenced to 39 years in prison for crimes he didn’t commit. Innocent, and unjustly convicted of murder and robbery, his is the longest wrongful imprisonment in US history. The John Adams Institute is honored to host Rickey, who will share the lessons he learned about freedom and forgiveness. The sole evidence against …...
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Kara Walker exhibition at De Pont

May 14, 2022

In the exhibition A Black Hole is Everything a Star Longs to Be, Kara Walker (1969, USA) opens her private archives containing more than 600 drawings that she has kept hidden for the past 28 years. De Pont in Tilburg is presenting these unknown treasures in Walker's first major solo exhibition in the Netherlands....
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Margaret Atwood on the right to abortion

May 11, 2022

The US supreme court draft ruling on abortion is an assault on fundamental individual freedoms, says Margaret Atwood. In this article for the Guardian, The Handmaid’s Tale author reflects on the issues at stake in case Roe vs. Wade gets overturned by the court as expected. Atwood visited the John Adams twice, in ...
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Guns & Votes

Carol Anderson

May 30, 2022, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

On paper, every American has the right to vote and – thanks to the Second Amendment – to bear arms. But in reality, says Carol Anderson, both these rights are undermined by the racism which is so deeply rooted in American society. And that, in turn, undermines democracy. Anderson is a professor of African-American studies …...
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Essay on Ukraine by Timothy Snyder

May 6, 2022

The war in Ukraine Is a colonial war, argues American historian and author Timothy Snyder in a recent essay for the New Yorker. For centuries, the country has lived in the shadow of empire. But its past also provides the key to its present. Snyder visited the John Adams in 2018 to discuss his book The Road to Unfreedom....
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CinemAsia Film Festival

May 6, 2022

CinemAsia Film Festival in Amsterdam features Snakehead by American director Evan Jackson Leong. It tells the story of a woman called Tse, who comes from China to New York through a smuggler known as a snakehead. She quickly gains favor with the matriarch of the crime family. 13 May at Studio/K....
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Bill Browder: For Putin, It’s All About the Money

April 21, 2022

When it comes to the war in Ukraine, we are all trying to understand Putin’s motivations. According to Bill Browder, who has been following the dark money flowing out of Russia for years, it’s simply about money and enriching senior officials, he writes in Time. Browder will join the John Adams for a talk on May 13th....
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Empty Pedestals

By Brian Rose

April 21, 2022

Not long after I photographed Monument Avenue, the city announced that it was taking down all of the Confederate memorials, and in November of 2020 I returned to Monument Avenue to photograph the empty pedestals. The Jefferson Davis pavilion remained intact, but Vindicatrix was no longer perched on her slender column, Maury and his globe …...
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Work of Dutch artist at Coachella

April 20, 2022

Visual artist Kiki van Eijk is the first Dutch artist to have created a large-scale installation for Coachella, the renowned pop festival in California. She designed three large-scale sculptures named Buoyed, using a mix of different cultural identities and...
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Michael Ignatieff

On Consolation

May 19, 2022, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

How do we find solace in modern times? The internationally acclaimed Canadian author and historian Michael Ignatieff will visit the John Adams Institute to discuss just that in his new, bestselling book: On Consolation: Finding Solace in Dark Times. Ignatieff was the rector of the Central European University in Budapest, until he was forced to …...
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Bill Browder

Freezing Order

May 13, 2022, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

The latest massacres in Bucha and Mariupol have shown that Vladimir Putin has no regard for human life – he only cares about power and money. In Putin’s eyes, money is power, and vice versa. That’s why freezing the assets of Russians tied to Putin’s regime is so important. Between 1996 and 2005, American investor …...
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The “Patron Saint of New York”

by Jaap Jacobs

April 19, 2022

The bonds that connect the American and Dutch peoples have been commemorated in various ways and at various levels. Dutch-American Friendship Day is a well-established annual event at the governmental level. In New York City, the historical memory of Petrus Stuyvesant has recently become controversial, but in the twentieth century his image was iconic. Two …...
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Podcast Netherland-America Foundation

April 16, 2022

The NAF started their very own podcast: Bridging Worlds. In the first episode, historian Susan Suer and host Laila Frank follow in the footsteps of the Pilgrims' time in Leiden. In 2020, the John Adams published a 3-part blog series about the pilgrims, called the Pilgrim...
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Rumors of War

By Brian Rose

April 14, 2022

A few nights before I arrived in Richmond, protesters set fire to the headquarters of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC), just a few blocks off Monument Avenue. No other organization was more responsible for the placement of Confederate monuments in Richmond and elsewhere in the south than the UDC. Women were the leaders …...
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New Masters on Tour

April 12, 2022

This year's New Masters on Tour features the American pianist Seho Young. Together with Annabel Hauk (cello) and János Palojtay (piano), he will play compositions of Franck, Ives, Grieg, Liszt and Schumann. Both Young and Hauk studied at the New England Conservatorium in Boston. For tickets and dates, click here....
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Pathfinder of the Seas and a Tennis Champion

By Brian Rose

April 7, 2022

The most prominent statues along Monument Avenue depicted Confederate generals on horseback, heroic battlefield leaders, perched on pedestals high above the heads of onlookers. An exception was the memorial to Matthew Fontaine Maury, a naval officer, who was nicknamed Pathfinder of the Seas. He charted the world’s oceans, and his profile of the Atlantic seabed …...
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Kim Wehle on Supreme Court Justice Thomas

April 6, 2022

In this interview for MSNBC, law professor Kim Wehle discusses whether Supreme Court Justice Thomas should recuse himself, resign, or face impeachment because of his wife's involvement in trying to overturn the outcome of the 2020 election. Wehle visited the John Adams in 2020 to talk about her book about the constitution....
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Anne Applebaum on the threat to democracy

April 3, 2022

A stern warning from Central and Eastern Europe-expert Anne Applebaum in The Altantic: democracies have to work harder to defend themselves. If they don't, the forces of autocracy will destroy them. Applebaum visited the John Adams in 2012 to discuss her book Iron Curtain....
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Goddess of Vindication

By Brian Rose

March 31, 2022

Monument Avenue was built as an extension of the city of Richmond in the late 19th century, and like many such projects, was at heart a real estate venture. But it was also an expression of the city beautiful movement inspired by European architecture, and echoed similar planning schemes like Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia, …...
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Muhammad Ali documentary by Ken Burns

March 30, 2022

NPO is currently screening the the documentary Muhammad Ali by renowned director Ken Burns. The series paints a sweeping portrait of a man whose life intersected with many of modern America’s most profound changes. Every Monday on NPO2 at 10.20pm. Also available on ...
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Patrick Radden Keefe on Putin’s Oligarchs

March 29, 2022

In this article for the New Yorker, Patrick Radden Keefe describes how Putin's oligarchs basically bought London. He shows how the British establishment has long been at their service, discretion guaranteed. Last year, Keefe ...
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50 years American Book Center

March 28, 2022

This year, the American Book Center in the Netherlands celebrates 50 years of bookselling. There will be activities throughout the anniversary year. On April 16, ABC will welcome customers to birthday parties in all three ABC stores in Amsterdam, The Hague and Leidschendam. Click here for more information....
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Remembering Madeleine Albright

March 25, 2022

On March 23rd, Madeleine Albright died aged 84. She was the first female secretary of state in US history, a champion of democracy and one of the best and the brightest of American thinking. She visited the John Adams six times, and features in episode one our podcast Bright Minds....
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Grand Boulevard of the Lost Cause

By Brian Rose

March 24, 2022

The first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic crested in New York in the spring of 2020 when the eerie calm of the lockdown was broken by the news of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Protesters flooded into the streets across the country demanding justice under the slogan “Black Lives Matter.” I followed …...
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Biden’s misunderstanding of history

March 23, 2022

What kind of history is informing today’s decisions in Washington as the war in Ukraine drags on? According to historian Niall Ferguson, President Biden is making a colossal mistake in thinking he can bleed Russia dry and topple Putin. Ferguson joined the John Adams online last year to discuss his book Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe....
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TV series of the WeWork startup story

March 22, 2022

Apple TV+ presents WeCrashed, a dramatisation of the already fairly dramatic real-life rise and fall of the property rental company WeWork and its udacious founder Adam Neumann. Last year, journalist and author Eliot Brown joined us online to discuss his book The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam...
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JR: Chronicles at Groninger Museum

March 19, 2022

The Groninger Museum, in cooperation with the Brooklyn Museum in New York, will exhibit the work of US based French artist JR. Alongside JR's work, the museum will show graffiti and streetart from New York and Groningen. From 20 November 2021 to Sunday 12 June 2022....
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America needs a better plan to fight autocracy

March 17, 2022

America needs a better plan to fight autocracy, writes Anne Applebaum in The Atlantic. By enabling Putin and other global kleptocrats, the West undermined democracy. It’s time to change tactics. In 2012, journalist, historian and Eastern Europe-expert visited the John Adams to talk about her book Iron Curtain....
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Loose Ends

By Jan Banning

March 17, 2022

Christina’s life sentence is based on the argument that if she had taken Amber to the hospital in time, her daughter would not have died. Exactly when she should have called in this timely medical attention was never stated. However, to justify the conviction, Amber would have to have incurred the fatal injuries before Christina …...
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Yascha Mounk

The Great Experiment

Apr 10, 2022, 3:00 pm - 5:00 pm

The John Adams institute is delighted to present one of the brightest minds in American political thought today: the refreshingly outspoken German-American political scientist Yascha Mounk. He will join us on April 10th to discuss his new, long-awaited book The Great Experiment: Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart And How They Can Endure. In his new …...
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Rachelle Meyer in the New Yorker

March 15, 2022

The lastest issue of The New Yorker is showing the work of Amsterdam-based American artist Rachelle Meyer. In 2019, she created a wonderful blog series for the John Adams called 'Faces on the Ferry'...
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Ukraine: Was the West was too complacent?

March 10, 2022

American-born Roberta Haar is Professor of Foreign Policy Analysis and Transatlantic Relation. In Elsevier Weekblad she argues that Western complacency might have gotten us where we are today in Ukraine. In the article, she refers to the John Adams...
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Beyond a Reasonable Doubt?

By Jan Banning

March 10, 2022

Three months after Christina’s sentencing, David’s trial started. The forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy was questioned intensively on the injuries of Amber’s pancreas. He described them as ‘a couple of very, very small injuries to the pancreas’, which ‘probably would have healed themselves without medical intervention.’ ‘Serious disfigurement’, which had just got Christina twenty …...
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Sackler family reaches deal in opioid lawsuits

March 5, 2022

The Sacklers reached a new deal over the family's involvement in the opioid epidemic. According to the latest agreement, they will contribute up to $6 billion to resolve any claims. Last September, Patrick Radden Keefe...
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Plea Bargain

By Jan Banning

March 3, 2022

Amber’s death was big news in Carroll County. It continued to be the subject of animated discussion among the readers of the local Times Georgian for many weeks. Readers – especially female readers – spoke of the unjustifiable death of Amber Boyer (sic) who was allegedly beaten ‘beyond recognition’ by her mother and her mother’s …...
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William Drozdiak

The Future of Europe

Mar 23, 2022, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

The war between Russia and Ukraine starkly illustrates Europe’s vulnerability in an era of resurgent big-power rivalry. President Emmanuel Macron of France has taken the lead in Europe and has warned that the European Union could find itself trapped, even victimized, by power struggles involving Russia, but also China and the United States. It is …...
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Job opening: program and development coordinator

February 24, 2022

The John Adams is hiring! We are offering a great opportunity for a program and development coordinator, preferably starting in May 2022. Click here for the job description. To apply, please email us at info@john-adams.nl with a short motivation and a resume. Application deadline 18 March....
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Cause of Death

By Jan Banning

February 24, 2022

Amber was born on 29 September 1988. Only a few close friends know who the father was. But since Christina was still married to James Bennett, Amber got his surname. Over the days preceding her death on Tuesday, whenever Amber was alone with David, the girl had suffered bruises, scratches and bumps. On Friday, David …...
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Webinars: Baltimore & Rotterdam: Designing Cities

February 22, 2022

Each week this spring, two design groups, one from Baltimore and one from the Dutch city of Rotterdam pair up to discuss architecture, urban design, and how design and policy can improve the built environment for all residents. Click here for dates and to register....
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Could The Dutch Polder System Work in the U.S?

February 22, 2022

The Netherlands' five centuries of experience living below sea level, could be needed by the U.S. as water levels continue to rise and coastal communities are threatened. In this article, a Dutch engineer outlines pilot projects for three American cities that will be particularly vulnerable: Boston, Miami and San Francisco....
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New book by Kim Wehle

February 17, 2022

In her new book How to Think Like a Lawyer - and Why, law professor and author Kim Wehle teaches non-attorneys how to think like a lawyer to gain advantage in their lives, whether buying a house, negotiating a salary, or choosing the right healthcare. Wehle joined the John Adams in 2020 to discuss her book on...
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Amber’s Death

By Jan Banning

February 17, 2022

Carroll Co., Georgia, USA. Tuesday April 14, 1992 was a balmy spring day just before Easter. Shortly after 12:30 pm, 22-year-old Christina Boyer drove off from her new boyfriend David Herrin’s trailer in his old Chevy Impala. She went to work as a typist in the nearby town of Carrollton, leaving her three-year-old daughter Amber …...
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NAF Webinar: 17th century Dutch women artists

February 15, 2022

In anticipation of a major exhibition on Dutch and Flemish women artists at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington D.C., the Netherland-America Foundation will host a webinar on Dutch women artists of the 17th century on March 3rd, 6m (ET)....
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Book event novel ‘Place’

February 9, 2022

In celebration of Dutch-American Friendship Day on April 19th, author Hannah Huber is holding a book event for the release of her debut novel Place. Join in for an entertaining evening full of comedy, live music, interviews with special guests moderated by Dutch journalist Laila Frank, readings from the book and book signing....
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Why Toni Morrison’s books are target of book bans

February 8, 2022

Morrison’s works are a regular fixture on the American Library Association annual list of the top 10 most challenged books, writes Time. Scholars say Morrison’s books are controversial because they address the dark moments in American...
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NRC: Dutch roots of the African-American flag

February 5, 2022

The red, black and green African-American Flag is the symbol of the Black Pride Movement in the US. It was created in Friesland and was first raised in the heart of Amsterdam, more than 30 years ago, initiated by Dutch art collector Jan Christiaan Braun and American artist David Hammons. Read the story in NRC here (in Dutch)....
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Exhibition Bryan Schutmaat

February 4, 2022

The photo series 'County Road' by American photographer Bryan Schutmaat were mainly taken in rural Texas during the Covid-19 shutdown. By portraying dirt roads, forests, farmland, meadows, he captured nature's indifference to humanity. County Road is on view at Galerie Wouter van Leeuwen in Amsterdam from...
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Elizabeth Kolbert on crossover voting

January 27, 2022

The tactic of crossover voting, when voters cast ballots for a party with which they are not traditionally affiliated, is mostly applied to undermine the opposition. It has a bad reputation, but what if it's used to save the Republic, wonders ...
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Maya Angelou first woman on US quarter

January 26, 2022

The US Treasury has minted coins featuring poet Maya Angelou, the first black woman ever featured on the US 25-cent coin known as a quarter. Coins are planned for other pioneering women, including an astronaut, a tribal chief and an actress, as part of the American Women Quarters program....
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Panel Discussion: Pilgrims From Leiden

January 21, 2022

On 25 Jan. the American Book Center will host a virtual panel discussion about the Pilgrim Fathers. Experts will talk about the light and darkness that these radical separatists brought to the New World, from William Brewster's enlightening library of 400 books, to treaty violations on the part of today's U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs....
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Hanya Yanagihara

To Paradise

Mar 11, 2022, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

This year’s most anticipated new novel is without a doubt Hanya Yanagihara’s To Paradise (published in Dutch as Naar het paradijs by Nieuw Amsterdam). And we are thrilled that Hanya Yanagihara is returning to the John Adams for a conversation about her three-part story across three centuries, centered around New York City. To Paradise is …...
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New book by futurist Amy Webb

January 19, 2022

In her new book The Genesis Machine, co-written with pioneering geneticist Andrew Hessel, futurist Amy Webb presents some bold ideas about procreation and the possibilities and pitfalls of synthetic biology. Webb visited the John Adams in 2017 to discuss her book The Signals Are Talking....
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Livestream ‘Biden’s America’

January 11, 2022

On Jan. 17, 8pm, Haagsch College, Maarten van Rossem and Adriaan Andringa will delve into the soul of political America. Can Biden as Healer-in-Chief really bring Americans back together? And how decisive is the Trump factor in this year's important Congressional elections? For more info and tickets, click here....
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New books Toni Morrison and Hanya Yanagihara

January 11, 2022

Two new books by two great authors and former guest speakers of the John Adams: Recitatif, a rare short story by the late Toni Morrison will be published as a book, while Hanya Yanagihara is about to publish her third novel, To...
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TV series about the Pilgrim Fathers

January 6, 2022

The Mayflower set sail for the New World more than 400 years ago carrying a group of English Puritans living in Leiden. They are traditionally seen as the founders of the US. A new documentary examines how that particular part of history of the US is viewed today. In het kielzog van de Mayflower, from 7 Jan 10:05pm NPO 2 (in Dutch)....
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New York Times: Fukuyma on Capitol insurrection

January 6, 2022

The dramatic events on Jan. 6, 2020 continue to reverberate in American politics, but its impact is not just domestic, argues Francis Fukuyama in the NYT. It also had a large impact internationally and signals a significant decline in American global power. Fukuyama sproke at the John Adams in 1995, ...
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Documentary ‘Four Hours at the Capitol’

January 4, 2022

A year after the insurrection at the US Capitol, the VPRO broadcasts the documentary Four Hours at the Capitol. It shows protesters, police officers, members of the US Congress and the Senate sharing their experiences, often for the first time. The result is both a grim and intimate reminder of...
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New short story by Jennifer Egan

January 3, 2022

The January edition of The New Yorker features a new short story by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jennifer Egan. What the Forest Remembers has two story lines with, one of them being the backbone of Egan's forthcoming book, The Candy House. She ...
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Wintergasten interviews Colson Whitehead

December 30, 2021

The 3rd episode of VPRO's Wintergasten featured Colson Whitehead, author of Pulitzer Prize winning novels like The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys. This year he published Harlem Shuffle. In 2017 the author visited the John Adams to talk about his book The Underground Railroad....
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Elizabeth Kolbert on polarization

December 29, 2021

In this article for the New Yorker, Elizabeth Kolbert wonders how politics got so polarized and if anything can bring 'us'and 'them' together if in an era of hyperpartisan identities? Kolbert joined us last June for a talk about her book Under a White Sky, which explores geo-engineering and climate change....
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Foam: A Sidelong Glance

December 20, 2021

The upcoming exhibition A Sidelong Glance by John Edmons (1989, USA) at Foam examines issues of identity and power. From an African-American perspective, his work is a reinterpretation of the past, emphasizing the black human subject and cultural...
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The floating homes of Amsterdam

December 20, 2021

In Amsterdam, a community of floating homes shows the world how to live alongside nature. The Washington Post reports on a movement for urban dwellers grappling with rising sea levels and the accelerating impacts of climate change. Click ...
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Photo bulletin by Andrea Bruce

December 20, 2021

In a weekly bulletin Down in the County, American photographer Andrea Bruce explores Pamlico County, a largely overlooked, rural area in North Carolina, covering the local community, local events, school board meetings, proms, and church gatherings....
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Artists help to remove the Sackler name

December 13, 2021

More than ...
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Tourist-weary Amsterdam takes new measures

December 10, 2021

Tourist-weary Amsterdam announced this week that it will take ongoing plans to reduce the impact of tourism one step further. The city’s latest bold initiative is offering up cash to help local community groups oust touristy businesses, writes Bloomburg CityLab....
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Elizabeth Kolbert on the control of nature

December 8, 2021

In this article for the New Yorker, writer and journalist Elizabeth Kolbert wonders if tinkering with photosynthesis could prevent a global food crisis and set off a Green Revolution. In June of this year, Kolbert joined us online for a talk about the pros and cons of geo-enigineering as a means to fight the climate crisis....
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ITA LIVE: Revolutionary Road

December 8, 2021

Revolutionary Road, a play based on the work by American novelist Richard Yates, returns to ITA on 19 December via ITA Live. It tells the story of Frank and April Wheeler, who are stuck in their bourgeois existence in the suburbs. As they begin to hate their lives more and more, their marriage slowly falls apart....
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Joseph Stiglitz on COVID and capitalism

December 6, 2021

Two economic experts agree that the pandemic has altered the world’s economy and brought capitalism and its power into question. One of them, Joseph Stiglitz, argues that the private sector has proven incapable of responding alone and that government has a big role to play. Stiglitz visited the John Adams in 2016 and ...
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NYT 100 Notable Books of 2021

December 1, 2021

No less than seven former John Adams speakers made it onto the most notable book list 2021 of the New York Times: Richard Powers, Anthony Doerr, Jonathan Franzen, Colson Whitehead, Gary Shteyngart, Patrick Radden Keefe and George Packer. Visit our library page to look back on their talks at our institute....
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Virtual talk Albright and Rice

December 1, 2021

On December 16th, 10AM (CT), The Chicago Council on Global Affairs will host an online talk with former Secretaries of State Madeleine Albright and Condoleezza Rice. They will discuss their experience as trailblazers in foreign policy and the critical importance of women's...
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Jeff Flake at Nexus Conference

November 18, 2021

Jeff Flake, former US Senator and current Ambassador for the US to Turkey will speak at the upcoming Nexus Conference 'The Revolution of Hope' in Amsterdam. On November 20th, he will contribute to a discussion about the collective cry for radical change echoing around the globe since the outbreak of the corona crisis....
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Patrick Radden Keefe wins Baillie Gifford prize

November 17, 2021

The Baillie Gifford prize 2021, the annual British book prize for the best non-fiction writing in the English language, has been awarded to Patrick Radden Keefe, for his book Empire of Pain, which explores the role of the Sackler family in the opioid crisis. Keefe visited the John Adams recently to discuss...
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New photo book on America in crisis

November 15, 2021

American photographer Philip Montgomery has been chronicling the country’s struggles with an intimacy that can be achieved only by getting uncomfortably close. Patrick Radden Keefe, who wrote a book about the opioid crisis and visited the John Adams recently, discusses Montgomery's new work in the New Yorker....
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Documentary: Toni Morrison – Black Matter(s)

November 15, 2021

On Nov 17th, 'Het Uur van de Wolf' will screen the documentary Toni Morrison - Black Matter(s), a portrait of the Pulitzer Prize winning author, and he first black female writer to win the Nobel Prize (1993). In 2009 she visited the John Adams to discuss her book ...
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‘An Ugly Truth’ wins Best in Business Book Awards

November 10, 2021

The Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing announced An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook's Battle for Domination by Cecilia Kang and Sheera Frenkel the winner of their annual Best in Business Book Awards. Kang recently visited the John Adams to discuss the dark side of Facebook. Click ...
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American documentaries at IDFA

November 9, 2021

The International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) is about to kick off. From November 17 to 28, documentary lovers are invited to theaters throughout Amsterdam. This year, no less than 33 American films are screening throughout the program. Click on the read more button for titles and info....
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Dutch company focuses on cellular agriculture

November 8, 2021

Cellular agriculture is out to change everything about meat production — without changing anything about meat consumption. A Dutch company is working towards a future in which one cow can feed a large country. Click here to read the full article in Time....
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‘Place’: First novel by Hannah Huber

November 6, 2021

Dutch-American Hannah Huber, founder of Amsterdam Academy, a learning platform for the international community of the Netherlands, published her first novel. Place is a story about what it’s like to be a dual citizen, to which anyone with two passports and two homes and has spent significant time away from their country of origin can relate....
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George Packer

Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal

Apr 25, 2022, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

Acclaimed National Book Award-winning author George Packer returns to the John Adams to discuss his latest book Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal. In this thought-provoking book about the decline and fall of self-government of the United States, Packer accepts that there’s a new reality for America: “a failed state”. A state that …...
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Book presentation by Michael Persson

November 2, 2021

Former US correspondent Michael Persson will present his book 'De val van Amerika' on November 10, 7pm at De Nieuwe Boekhandel in Amsterdam. The book describes the Trump years and looks to the future of the US. The event will be moderated by Eelco Bosch van Rosenthal (in Dutch)....
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Mieke Kirkels wins AAHGS Book Award

October 25, 2021

The Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society in Washington DC has awarded Mieke Kirkels, research fellow at Maastricht University, an Internatonial AAHGS Book Award for her book Dutch Children of African American Liberators. (Picture above by Brian Elstak)....
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HOVO course on Supreme Court

October 23, 2021

HOVO Brabant presents a 3-day course on the ins and outs of the US Supreme Court, taught by America expert Tanja Groenendijk-De Vos (in Dutch). It will address issues like composition of the court, nominations, decision making, and the influence of the current Supreme Court judges on society....
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Zuckerberg to be added to Facebook privacy suit

October 20, 2021

The District of Columbia case, which grew out of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, could expose the chief executive of Facebook to financial and other penalties, writes Cecilia Kang in the New York Times. On October 27th, she will join the John Adams to talk about her research on Facebook's dark side....
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DeLaMar West: Broken Winged Bird

October 19, 2021

On Dec. 16, Toneelgroep Maastricht will perform Broken Winged Bird, the story of a black American soldier who fought in World War II. When he returned home, he didn't receive a hero's welcome like his white comrades. Last year, the John Adams published the blog series Black Liberators. Click below to read more....
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The Accessible City

Online event with Chris & Melissa Bruntlett

Nov 16, 2021, 8:00 pm - 9:15 pm

What was it about life in the Netherlands that Canadian couple Chris and Melissa Bruntlett found so attractive? So attractive that they pulled up stakes and left Vancouver to actually move to Delft with their two children? The answer is: quality of life. A big factor that impacts quality of life is how we move …...
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NNI Event: Black Lives in Dutch New York

October 13, 2021

On October 23rd, the New Netherlands Institute will host an online event exploring the Black experience in the Dutch colony of New Netherland. How did Blacks live in New Amsterdam? What was slavery in the colony? When did the first Africans arrive? Click here to register....
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Nobel Economics Prize for Guido Imbens

October 11, 2021

Dutch-American economist Guido Imbens has won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Imbens is the applied econometrics professor and professor of economics at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research....
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Lecture: Polarization in the US – A New Civil War?

October 11, 2021

On October 13, the Netherlands Atlantic Youth organize a program about polarization in the US. To what extent can we compare polarization today to polarization in the 19^th century? How did the US come together again after the Civil War, and can the current divisions still be healed? Click here to register....
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The Enduring Confidence of James Madison

By Dennis C. Rasmussen

October 6, 2021

Despite being a rather sickly hypochondriac, James Madison outlasted all the other founders, living until June 1836, almost through Andrew Jackson’s second term as president. Through all that time he remained relatively confident in the superiority and durability of America’s constitutional order. He did occasionally harbor some real worries and experience some palpable disappointments, …...
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Cecilia Kang

An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook's Battle for Domination

Oct 27, 2021, 8:30 pm - 10:30 pm

For years, fringe ideologues were able to use Facebook undisturbed to promote their extreme ideologies and conspiracies. In An Ugly Truth, published in Dutch as Een smerige waarheid by Atlas Contact, New York Times tech reporters Cecilia Kang and Sheera Frenkel reveal how Facebook’s algorithms sacrificed everything for user engagement and profit, while creating a …...
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New novel by Anthony Doerr

October 5, 2021

In Anthony Doerr's new novel Cloud Cuckoo Land, the world may be falling apart but the five protagonists find resourcefulness and hope in the midst of peril. Doerr, considered one of America’s best storytellers, visited the John Adams in 2015 to discuss his Pullizer Prize winning book All the Light we Cannot See....
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History Month: Lecture by James Kennedy

October 4, 2021

On Oct. 19th, American historian James Kennedy will discuss the Dutch work ethic. How have ideas about work shifted in recent decades? What are the differences between the Netherlands and other countries? His lecture 'Why do we work?' (in Dutch) is part of History Month 2021, and will take place at the OBA in Amsterdam....
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New novel by Jonathan Franzen

September 30, 2021

In Jonathan Franzen's new novel Crossroads, bad decisions and bad faith weigh down the characters - and propel the novel to startling heights, according to The New...
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The Disillusionment of Thomas Jefferson: Sectionalism

By Dennis C. Rasmussen

September 29, 2021

Thomas Jefferson’s disillusionment was in many respects the most surprising of all. For most of his life he was consistently – one might even say relentlessly – optimistic about America’s future. Even when the Federalists implemented measures that he deemed deeply objectionable during their ascendancy in the 1790s, from Alexander Hamilton’s financial plan to …...
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Five star review: Empire of Pain

September 27, 2021

Patrick Radden Keefe's new book Empire of Pain, which focuses on the dark side of the American pharmaceutical industry, just received 5 stars in the NRC (article is in Dutch). On September 29th, Keefe will join us to discuss his new book at 8pm at the OBA in Amsterdam. Click here for more info and tickets....
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Webinar on the legacy of Eleanor Roosevelt

September 26, 2021

The Netherland-America Foundation (in New York) and the RIAS will host an online event on “The Legacy of Eleanor Roosevelt” on Friday 15 October 2021. Several speakers will discuss the role that Eleanor Roosevelt played in negotiating and promoting human and women's rights within the UN....
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The Photograph

Documentary & Doc Talk

Oct 03, 2021, 6:45 pm - 8:45 pm

In The Photograph, a single photo unleashes a whirlwind of exceptional stories. About New York and its Black inhabitants, about pride and tradition, about the power of photography, and about director Sherman De Jesus’ grandfather. Sherman De Jesus heads to New York with a seemingly clear goal in mind: to find out the story behind …...
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The Disillusionment of John Adams: Civic Virtue

By Dennis C. Rasmussen

September 22, 2021

The namesake of this institute, John Adams, was unsurpassed among the American founders in the depth of his knowledge about politics, history, and law. No one in that age of remarkably learned political leaders – not even James Madison – read as voraciously or ranged as widely as Adams in contemplating the proper underpinnings …...
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Canopy Theater performs ‘Eleemosynary’

September 21, 2021

Eleemosynary is a play by the American playwright Lee Blessing. The story revolves around three generations of women who share their stories with the audience over the course of seven scenes. Their efforts to be both a parent and a child are shared with the audience directly through narration and dialogue....
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New book by Richard Powers

September 19, 2021

Bewilderment, the latest novel by Pulitzer-Prize winning author Richard Powers, tells the story of an astrobiologist who uses his knowledge of building simulated worlds to soothe his troubled son with inner voyages to fantastical worlds. Richard Powers visited the John Adams twice, in 1992 and in ...
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Lecture by Princeton’s Jan-Werner Mueller

September 17, 2021

Everyone knows that democracy is in trouble, but do we know what democracy actually is? As part of the Munich Dialogues on Democracy Speakers Series, a cooperation between The Yale Club of Germany and the Amerikahaus in Munich, Professor at Princeton University Jan-Werner Mueller will discuss on 30/9....
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The Disillusionment of Alexander Hamilton: Governmental Energy

By Dennis C. Rasmussen

September 15, 2021

Among the American founders, Alexander Hamilton was easily the most consistent and unabashed proponent of a strong national government. His foremost dream for the new United States was that it would eventually achieve the kind of international prominence, military might, and economic prosperity that he saw embodied in the great European monarchies, especially Britain, …...
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NYT on co-housing in the Netherlands

September 13, 2021

This article in the New York Times explores how socioeconomic developments have contributed to a rising interest in communal living in the Netherlands and Belgium. Co-housing is helping people cope with rising costs, keep loneliness at bay and live more sustainably....
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New novel by Colson Whitehead

September 10, 2021

After winning back-to-back Pulitzers, the author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys took another detour with his new crime novel, Harlem Shuffle. Whitehead, who is considered to be one of the most important voices in America today, visited the John Adams in 2017....
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Rachelle Meyer announces publication mini-comics

September 10, 2021

Rachelle Meyer, an American artist who lives in Amsterdam, created Texas Tracts, a collection of autobio mini-comics. In the trilogy, Rachelle shares funny and touching stories about growing up Catholic in the Lone Star State. Click here for the Faces on the Ferry blogseries she wrote for the John Adams in 2019....
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Government debt shouldn’t stop investments in US infrastructure

September 8, 2021

The coming public debt scare should not spook US policy policymakers from investing in psysical and social infrastructure, writes economics professor Barry Eichengreen in an article based on his new book In Defense of Public Debt. visited the John Adams in 2019 to...
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The Disillusionment of George Washington: Partisanship

By Dennis C. Rasmussen

September 8, 2021

Throughout his remarkable public career, one of George Washington’s foremost wishes for his country was that it would remain free of political parties and partisanship. All of America’s founders at least professed an aversion to “factions,” as they were frequently called, but none loathed them more fiercely, consistently, and sincerely than he did. As …...
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Lessons from the Dutch for climate change in the US

September 4, 2021

On fire and under water, one thing is clear: The U.S. is not ready for climate change. If only they’d listened to scientists like the Netherlands did whose government created a program called 'Room for the River', writes the New York Times. Click here to read the article....
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Why America’s Founders Came to Fear for the Country’s Future

By Dennis C. Rasmussen

September 1, 2021

On September 17, 1787, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention gathered one last time in what is now Independence Hall in Philadelphia in order to sign the charter that they had spent the past four months crafting. As the last of the thirty-eight signers affixed their names to the Constitution, Benjamin Franklin called attention …...
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Online Exhibtion: Foam Talent 2021

August 27, 2021

The 15th edition of Foam Talent presents an online selection of 20 outstanding artists. The exhibit features four American photographers, Tommy Kha, Pat Martin, Joey Solomon and Leonard Suryajaya. The annual competition is a search for exceptionally talented young photographers,...
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Exhibition Margaret Kilgallen

August 25, 2021

The Bonnefanten museum in Maastricht is showing That's where the beauty is, an exhibition exploring the work of American artist Margaret Kilgallen. She's known for her line drawings, which are closely linked to various subcultures and feminist themes. On view until 7 November....
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Purchase of installation art Patricia Kaersenhout

August 25, 2021

Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and three other Dutch museums, purchased a work by the activist artist Patricia Kaersenhout. The installation Guess Who's Coming To Dinner Too? tells the stories of 60 heroines of resistance. Kaersenhout joined our event 'Art & Activism' in 2020, along with...
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The hidden human costs of incarceration

August 20, 2021

Law professor Andrea Armstrong ...
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Exhibition ‘The Art of the Brick’

August 17, 2021

The world’s largest exhibition of Lego®-art is in Amsterdam this summer. The 100 art works on view were all created by New York artist Nathan Sawaya. He is the first artist to ever take LEGO into the art world. 'Art of the Brick' is on view until 29 August....
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Patrick Radden Keefe

Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty

Sep 29, 2021, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

The name of the Sackler family adorns the walls of many storied institutions – Harvard, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Oxford, the Louvre. They are one of the richest families in the world, known for their lavish donations to the arts and sciences. The source of the family fortune was vague, however, until it emerged …...
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Russell Shorto

Smalltime: A Story of My Family and the Mob

Sep 15, 2021, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

Could it really be happening? Will there – after more than a year and a half online – be a John Adams event with a real, live speaker?! Yes, in addition to our rich online program we are happy to start welcoming speakers in person again. On September 15, Russell Shorto will take the John …...
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Microsoft opens AI Lab in Amsterdam

August 15, 2021

Microsoft Research will open an artificial intelligence lab in Amsterdam, led by the renowned Dutch scientist Max Welling. The US-based tech company’s new research lab will...
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U.N. climate report on geo-engineering

August 11, 2021

The U.N. climate report released Monday presents a major leap forward in predicting how geo-engineering to limit global warming might affect the planet, although the greatest hurdle remains deciding whether to use the controversial methods, reports Reuters. Elizabeth Kolbert wrote a book about this topic, and recently joined us for an ...
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Soaring house prices in the Netherlands

August 9, 2021

The Netherlands grapples with the social consequences of the soaring house prices. The Financial Times explores whether these increases are sustainable. Click here to read the article....
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Jill Lepore on Facebook’s broken vows

August 2, 2021

Facebook's pledge to to bring the world together wound up pulling us apart. In this article for the New Yorker, historian and writer Jill Lepore explores how the company's mission statements invoke the power of connection but not its perils. Lepore visited the John Adams in 2019....
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Possible gubernatorial bid Michael Steele

July 26, 2021

Michael Steele formed an exploratory committee for a possible 2022 Maryland gubernatorial bid. The former chairman of the Republican National Committee and member of The Lincoln Project, joined the John Adams last January for an interview about the...
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Outdoor exhibit Ellsworth Kelly

July 22, 2021

This summer, Rijksmuseum Gardens will exhibit nine sculptures by Ellsworth Kelly. Kelly was one of the most important American artists of the 2nd half of the 20th century. All nine sculptures are on view in the Netherlands for the first time....
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Jane’a Johnson new Artistic Director Foam

July 22, 2021

Jane’a Johnson will be the new Artistic Director at Foam Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam. A native of Sacramento, (CA), Johnson currently is Assistant Professor of Theory of Art & Design and a research fellow at the Center for Social Equity and Inclusion at Rhode Island School of Design....
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When will the Netherlands disappear?

July 19, 2021

With unprecedented sea level rise forecast as a result of climate change, the Dutch government is racing against the clock to figure out how to keep one of the world’s richest countries save, writes Politico....
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Far Cries 401

July 19, 2021

The Delfshaven Festival presents Far Cries 401, a show about leave-taking, inspired by the last year's anniversary of the voyage of the Pilgrim Fathers to America. July 21 & 22, at the Pelgrimsvaderkerk in Rotterdam....
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The Daily: A City’s Step Toward Reparations

July 14, 2021

In this episode of the New York Times podcast The Daily, journalist Megan Twohey tells the story of the city of Evanston, Illinois, the first city to approve a program of reparations for its Black residents. Twohey visited the John Adams in 2019, to discuss her book She Said about Harvey Weinstein which helped spark the #MeToo...
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ITA-Ensemble performs ‘A Little Life’

July 13, 2021

No novel has captivated and moved millions of readers during the past few years like A little life by American author Hanya Yanagihara. For ITA, Ivo van Hove adapted Yanagihara’s novel to theater and created a fascinating performance (from 29 September-2 October). ...
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The Dutch and the global tech war

July 11, 2021

A $150 million chip-making tool from a Dutch company has become a lever in the U.S.-Chinese struggle. It also shows how entrenched the global supply chain is, writes the New York Times. Click here for the article....
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New book by Michael Pollan

July 8, 2021

New York Times bestselling author Michael Pollan wrote This is Your Mind on Plants, a radical challenge to how we think about drugs, and an exploration into the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plants, and the equally powerful taboos. Pollan visited the John Adams three times....
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Eliot Brown

The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion

Jul 14, 2021, 8:00 pm - 9:00 pm

The Cult of We by Wall Street Journal correspondents Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell is the definitive inside story of WeWork and its audacious founder Adam Neumann. Neumann transformed himself from a struggling baby clothes salesman into the charismatic, hard-partying CEO of a company worth $47 billion — on paper. Billions poured in, but in …...
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Webinar: Blood on the River

July 3, 2021

On July 7, the NAF presents Blood on the River. In this webinar, historian Marjoleine Kars will tell the story of the thousands of slaves in the Dutch colony of Berbice who rose up in 1763 and seized control of many of the colony’s plantations. Click here to register....
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George Packer on a fractured America

June 30, 2021

People in the United States no longer agree on the nation’s purpose, values, history, or meaning. In this article for The Atlantic, American journalist and author George Packer...
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Exhibition Bruce Nauman at Stedelijk Museum

June 29, 2021

In collaboration with Tate Modern, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam presents the largest overview of the American artist Bruce Nauman in the Netherlands up to now. This exhibition spans a period of more than fifty years and reflects Nauman’s preoccupation with themes such as the body, language, and control....
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Book Launch: Curbing Traffic

June 28, 2021

On June 29th, Chris and Melissa Bruntlett's book Curbing Traffic will be released. It argues for an end to auto-dependency and supremacy, through the lenses of equity, wellbeing, resilience, and social cohesion. The authors just finished a blog series for the John Adams based on their book....
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Applebaum on the creation of a one-party states

June 26, 2021

In this article for The Atlantic, American journalist and historian Anne Applebaum points to the disturbing new hybrid of democracy and autocracy: rulers and the oligarchs who help them have figured out how to create a one-party state without the hassle of staging a coup....
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The Age-Friendly City

By Chris & Melissa Bruntlett

June 24, 2021

As we get older, many of us aspire to the same ideals: To enjoy old age from the comfort of the home we’ve built for as long as our bodies and minds will allow. We save for retirement to reduce financial worry, set up systems with family and friends to take care of each …...
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International Podcast Festival by Oorzaken

June 23, 2021

Oorzaken, a Dutch platform for narrative audio, will host the International Podcast Festival from 1-4 July. Part of their program is in English: Climate Anxiety (July 3rd), Plantation of Our Ancestors and a ...
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Elizabeth Kolbert on the risks of deep-sea mining

June 23, 2021

In this article for The New Yorker, Elizabeth Kolbert points to the hazards of seabed mining: we might be destroying the deep see before we even know what’s in it. Kolbert recently joined us to discuss the pros and cons of geo-engineering....
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Niall Ferguson

Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe

Jul 05, 2021, 7:30 pm - 8:45 pm

Might there have been fewer deaths from Covid-19 if governments had been quicker to impose lockdowns and restrict, even ban, air travel? Might its spread have been more quickly controlled if the Chinese authorities had been more open when the first cases were identified? The knowledge about diseases that we have accumulated over the past …...
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The Prosperous City

By Chris & Melissa Bruntlett

June 17, 2021

No matter the country, the connection between access to opportunity and economic prosperity is intrinsic. A population should be able to easily access housing, education, employment, health care, shops, and essential services. Despite this recognition, a car-dominant focus overlooks the negative impact this has on almost everyone, particularly those of lower incomes. Taking into …...
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Lecture ‘How Fascism Works’

June 17, 2021

Munich Dialogues on Democracy presents How Fascism Works: the Politcs of Us and Them, a lecture by Jason Stanley, Professor of Philosophy at Yale. He will explain how nations don’t have to be fascist to suffer from fascist politics. On June 28th, 2021, 7pm (CET)....
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Jonathan Safran Foer on the danger of factory farms

June 16, 2021

Factory farms are breeding grounds for pandemics, writes Jonathan Safran Foer for Farm Forward. Although the link between factory farming and pandemics is well established scientifically, the political will to act has been largely absent. Foer visited the...
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Virtual Symposium – Amsterdam and Rembrandt

June 15, 2021

On June 16th, the National Gallery of Canada will host a virtual symposium that traces the central decades of Rembrandt’s career, from his arrival in Amsterdam to the emergence of his late style in the mid-1650s, in the transformative context of the dynamic city that became his home. Click here for more info and to...
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Visitor Center for Netherlands American Cemetery

June 14, 2021

The American Battle Monuments Commission will soon start the construction of the Netherlands American Cemetery Visitor Center, located in Margraten. The modern cubic building (KAAN Architecten) will be built into the existing landscape with panoramic windows connecting visitors to the cemetery outside....
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Film adaption of ‘She Said’

June 12, 2021

Nearly four years after New York Times reporters Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor broke the bombshell Harvey Weinstein sex scandal report, Universal Pictures is prepping She Said, a drama based on their best-selling book. Megan Twohey visited the John Adams to talk about the investigation...
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RIAS hosts lecture about Covid and globalization

June 11, 2021

On 16 June, 4 pm (CET), the RIAS will host 'America’s Conflicted Relationship with Globalization in the Age of Covid', an online lecture by Petra Goedde, professor at Temple University (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania). Goedde is an expert on U.S. foreign relations, cultural globalization, and gender history....
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The Accessible City

By Chris & Melissa Bruntlett

June 10, 2021

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, a reccurring theme appeared every time a city suggested removing on-street parking in favor of low-car environments with extended sidewalks, pop-up bike-lanes, and patios; all in an effort to accommodate physical distancing and safer movement through its streets. Namely, the negative impact that would have on the disabled community: creating …...
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New book Russell Shorto in NRC

June 9, 2021

NRC reviewed Russell Shorto's latest book Smalltime, a family history about his grandfather and namesake who was a small-town mob boss in Pennsylvania (in Dutch). In September, Shorto, who is also the former director of the John Adams, is scheduled to visit the institute for an event about this book....
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Wolters Kluwer on event with Dr. Fauci

June 7, 2021

On May 25th, the John Adams and main sponsor Wolters Kluwer hosted Dr. Fauci and an expert panel on pandemics and the future of COVID-19. In this article, Wolters Kluwer looks back on the highlights from the conversation....
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Exhibition: Art Against the Flow – Chicago Calling

June 4, 2021

Museum of the Mind | Outsider Art, the only museum in the Netherlands that shows art works by national and international Outsider Artists, presents Art Against the Flow: Chicago Calling. The exhibition (from June 5) explores the visual story of the Windy City through works by ten Chicago artists. The museum is located at the Hermitage...
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Martha Nussbaum on #MeToo

June 4, 2021

In an interview with the New Yorker, the American philosopher discusses anger, pride, and justice after sexual assault. Her latest book, Citadels of Pride: Sexual Abuse, Accountability, and Reconciliation, focusses on gender relations and the role of anger in human behavior. Nussbaum visited the John Adams twice, in 2012 and ...
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The Feminist City

By Chris & Melissa Bruntlett

June 3, 2021

In the Netherlands, 56% of cyclists are women. This is not, as many like to purport, because Dutch women are born on bicycles, or that somehow, they are more confident, take more risks, or are in any way superior. Rather, the female cycling rates are so high because every Dutch city, town, and village …...
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Translation rights Boekenweekgeschenk sold to US

June 2, 2021

The translation rights of this year's Boekenweekgeschenk ('Book Week Gift') written by Hanna Bervoets were sold to America and six other countries. It's the first time that a book week gift written especially for the Dutch Book Week will be published in that many different countries....
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Exhibition to celebrate 375th anniversary of Brooklyn

June 1, 2021

To celebrate the 375th anniversary of the present-day New York neighborhood of Brooklyn, named after the Dutch city of Breukelen, Regionaal Historisch Centrum Vecht & Venen hosts the exhibition With a packed suitcase to Brooklyn. From June 24th, click here for more information (in Dutch)....
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The New Yorker Radio Hour interviews Spike Lee

May 31, 2021

In a recent interview with the New Yorker Radio Hour, Spike Lee talks about basketball, and looks back at a year of protest and activism. Click ...
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The Child-Friendly City

By Chris & Melissa Bruntlett

May 27, 2021

Emigrating to a new country is a difficult decision for anyone, and we were fully aware that uprooting our nine- and twelve-year-old children from the lives they had known since birth would come with its own set of challenges. But to give our children a freedom and independence we found impossible in our car-dominated …...
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Lecture: Dutch Slave Resistance in New York

May 26, 2021

The Netherland-America Foundation and the Roosevelt Institute for American Studies (RIAS) present ‘Dutch Slave Resistance in New York,’ a lecture about Dutch-owned enslaved people who played a visible role in challenging slavery throughout the state. The discussion will be moderated by former John Adams director Russell Shorto. June 1st, 6pm (CET)....
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Atwood and Whitehead discuss TV adaptions

May 22, 2021

In a conversation for Time, renowned authors Colson Whitehead and Margaret Atwood discuss what it means when books make their way onto the screen. The TV adaption of Whitehead's novel The Underground Railroad recently premiered, while Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale started its 4th season. Both authors are former guest speakers of the John Adams....
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Lecture: The Serendipity Mindset

May 21, 2021

On June 3rd (8pm CET), John Adams director Tracy Metz will talk to Dr. Christian Busch, author of The Serendipity Mindset and director of the Global Economy program at New York University's Center for Global Affairs. They will talk about the the science of serendipity, and how turn the unexpected into positive outcomes and creativity. Hosted by ...
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Elizabeth Kolbert

Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future

Jun 10, 2021, 8:00 pm - 9:00 pm

If we can just get through the 21st century, humanity might have a chance, says Elizabeth Kolbert. We have already intervened in the earth’s system to the extent that we are now living in the ‘Anthropocene’. Maybe we can buy time by intervening even more, with so-called geo-engineering: turning carbon emissions to stone, for example, …...
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Everything in life is better on a bike

By Tracy Metz

May 20, 2021

“Ask a Dutch person why they cycle so much, and they’ll shrug: ‘It’s just in our culture’; oblivious to the vast infrastructure networks built to make it easy. Ask an American why they drive so much, and they’ll do the same. First we shape our streets; then our streets shape us.” This was a …...
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Podcast by Jill Lepore

May 18, 2021

In the podcast The Last Archive, acclaimed historian Jill Lepore traces the history of evidence, proof, and knowledge in search of an answer to the question: Who killed truth? In 2019, Lepore visited the John Adams to discuss her book These Truths – A History of the United States....
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FT on the allure of Amsterdam

May 16, 2021

The Financial Times writes how Amsterdam's great work-life balance and growing role in financial services attract foreign homebuyers, with global employers such as Netflix and Tommy Hilfiger acting as major magnets for many young professionals....
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Online events Netherland-America Foundation

May 15, 2021

The NAF celebrates its 100th birthday with two events in May. The 20th, the NAF Live TV-Culture Edition will be broadcast from studios in Amsterdam and New York, featuring Dutch and American artists. The next day will bring the webcast 'Connecting Flight: 75 years Amsterdam – New York', commemorating the first...
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What comes next for Liz Cheney?

May 13, 2021

Rep. Liz Cheney lost her House leadership position, but she aims to become an even more influential political figure capable of weakening former president Trump’s hold on their party, ...
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Samantha Power wants to restore US prestige

May 12, 2021

Samantha Power, the recently appointed administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, wants to restore U.S. prestige by getting American-made vaccines ‘into arms’ around the world, as she states in the Washington Post. Power joined the John Adams in 2020...
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Lecture on Frederik Douglass by David W. Blight

May 10, 2021

Munich Dialogues on Democracy, Amerikahaus and the Bavarian American Academy present 'Frederick Douglass: Prose Poet of American Democracy', a talk by David W. Blight, Professor of History and Frederik Douglass expert. He will describe how Douglass, a former slave, would become the most famed and widely travelled orator in the nation, using...
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TV adaption of novel The Underground Railroad

May 6, 2021

On May 14th, Amazon will start airing The Underground Railroad, a historical fiction drama series directed by Barry Jenkins based on the novel of the same name by Colson Whitehead. The author visited the John Adams in 2017 to talk about his novel which won both the Pulizer Prize and the National Book Award. Click on the Read more button to watch the trailer....
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What We Lose if the Amsterdam Hermitage Closes

May 4, 2021

Due to the pandemic, the museum may be on the verge of shutting its doors just when Europe needs it more than ever. Besides the museum’s cultural importance, it also serves a political purpose as an ambassador to Russia, a country which is losing foreign allies and therefore is becoming increasingly inaccessible to the outside world. Click here to read the article....
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The Europe Challenge

May 2, 2021

The European Cultural Foundation launches The Europe Challenge: how do cultural public spaces help tackle economic recession, unemployment, social tensions, and climate change? At this online event on May 9th, people working throughout public spaces in Europe will discuss how this initiative works towards...
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US Senate confirms Samanta Power

May 1, 2021

The Senate has confirmed Samantha Power as the 19th Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development. Last June, the former ambassador to the UN, Pulitzer Prize winner, and human rights advocate spoke at the John Adams to discuss her book The Education of an Idealist: A Memoir....
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The John Adams partners with America institutes in Europe

April 29, 2021

Strengthening European-American Relations There is something new afoot at the John Adams – something bigger than bringing American culture to the Netherlands. We are making European connections! After all, the John Adams is not the only cultural institution in Europe which keeps tabs on great American thinking. It struck me that if these institutions are …...
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New story by Margaret Atwood

April 24, 2021

The New Yorker published Old Babes in the Wood, a new story by Margaret Atwood, about two elderly sisters who look back at their lives while spending time at a family cottage by a lake. Click here for the story and here for the interview with the author. Atwood visited the John Adams in ...
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John Kerry on fighting climate change

April 22, 2021

Ahead of the two-day climate summit hosted by the United States (22-23 April), U.S. special presidential envoy for climate John Kerry spoke to Washington Post journalist Jonathan Capehart. They discussed the importance of setting goals to cut global greenhouse gas emissions, and how the U.S. plans to lead by example....
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Launch Antwerp America Foundation

April 22, 2021

The Antwerp America Foundation, a new independent forum for American culture and a partner of the John Adams, will host its 1st lecture on May 4, 2.45 pm (CET). American economist and leading expert on sustainable development Jeffrey Sachs, will talk about...
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Online session on Russia by John Hopkins University

April 20, 2021

John Hopkins University will host an online discussion on how to deal with Russia. Former World Bank expert on Russia and political economist at JHU Washington Marsha McGraw Olive, and Dutch NRC columnist Hubert Smeets will talk about the relations of the US and the EU with Russia. On April 28th, 8pm (CET)....
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Panel discussion: What’s Wrong with Tech?

April 15, 2021

What’s Wrong With (www/), a diagnostic discussion series, presents What's Wrong with Tech? On April 22nd, 3pm (EST), three American panelists will discuss how technology has helped society develop, and how its application created (moral) dilemmas at the same time....
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Anne Applebaum on the US vaccination rollout

April 13, 2021

The U.S. stumbled early in the pandemic, but the vaccine rollout could reboot the country’s image, writes American journalist and historian Anne Applebaum in The Atlantic. In 2012, she ...
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New collection of essays by Rachel Kushner

April 11, 2021

In The Hard Crowd, Rachel Kushner gathers a selection of her writing from over the course of the last twenty years that addresses the most pressing political, artistic, and cultural issues of our times. Click here for review in the New York Times. In 2014, Kushner visited the John Adams to discuss her novel The Flamethrowers....
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Dr. Anthony Fauci

Challenging Corona

May 25, 2021, 5:30 pm - 6:45 pm

The John Adams Institute is happy to welcome Dr. Anthony Fauci, Chief Medical Advisor to the President, for a conversation about our response to the corona virus. If we have to learn to live with the virus, as is now often said, what will the ‘new normal’ look like? Is there indeed light at the …...
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Sharon Zukin

The Urban Innovation Complex

Apr 19, 2021, 8:30 pm - 10:00 pm

Cities like New York and San Francisco have bloomed thanks to the innovation economy. Can tech save our cities? In her new book The Innovation Complex, professor of urban sociology Sharon Zukin shows how these forces are shaping both the new urban economy and urban space. What happens when big tech enters a city? It brings talent and jobs and new ideas and urban revival, yes, but the ‘innovation complex’ also increases dependence on global capital and enables the rise of a new meritocratic...
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NIAS Lecture 2021

April 8, 2021

When we talk about the history of a country or a city, whose history are we talking about? This year’s NIAS Lecture will address the challenges of making an inclusive history. April 21th, 3.30pm (CET), with Jennifer Tosch (Founder of Black Heritage Tours Amsterdam & New York) and Femke Halsema (Mayor of Amsterdam)....
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Dutch design advice for US infrastructure plan

April 6, 2021

President Biden's massive infrastructure plan will need designs that can endure the changing climate. The new administration should look to the Dutch whose use of adaptive designs prepares for the future and keep costs under control, writes Jeremy Bicker for Fast Company....
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Brainwash presents Shoshana Zuboff

April 5, 2021

Tech companies know what you are doing by collecting all the information you share. On April 25th, Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff will discuss the dangers of this new reality at Brainwash Weekend. She will be joined by philosopher Haroon Sheikh, who moderated our event with Barry Eichengreen about his book The Populist Temptatation....
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Russell Shorto writes ‘Rembrandt in the Blood’

April 4, 2021

The New York Times published an intriguing story about an obsessive Dutch aristocrat, a rediscovered Rembrandt painting, and the art-world feud that followed. Written and introduced by former John Adams director Russell Shorto. Click here to read...
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Online lecture about American art history

April 1, 2021

The Arts Society of The Hague presents Masters of America from Copely to Bellows, a lecture about American art of the early modern period through the work of its leading masters. De online presentation takes place on April 13th, at 8pm. Last December, the John Adams hosted an event on art and activism in America....
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Profile of Alice Walker

March 29, 2021

De Groene Amsterdammer published a powerful profile (in Dutch) of author Alice Walker, best known for her Pulitzer-Prize winning novel The Color Purple. Walker visited the John Adams twice, in 1990 to talk about civil rights, and 1992 to discuss her book Possessing the Secret of Joy....
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Podcast: Comparing the Contrast

March 28, 2021

Norman Vladimir Smith, a US citizen living in Amsterdam, is the host of Comparing the Contrast, a podcast about all the things you discover when you take the leap to live outside of your home country. It deals with personal topics like connection, obligation and isolation....
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Jill Lepore writes about early constitutions

March 28, 2021

Starting in the eighteenth century, citizens were promised their rights in print. These early constitutions could be instruments of tyranny or platforms for populism, writes Harvard historian Jill Lepore in the New Yorker. Lepore visited the John Adams in 2019 to discuss her book These Truths – A History of the United States....
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A strong case for a strong welfare state

March 26, 2021

A stronger welfare state is the key to saving democracy from extremism, writes Katy Hull in the Washington Post. This idea for a social safety net to address societal problems to make fascism less attractive, dates back to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. Click here to read the article. Hull is a lecturer in American Studies at the University of Amsterdam....
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Webinar on the Dutch role in slave trade

March 23, 2021

The first enslaved Africans arrived in Virginia in 1619 on the White Lion, a privateer ship sailing under the aegis of Dutch letters of marque. On April 13, 2021 at 6pm (CET), the Netherland-America Foundation will host a webinar about the Dutch role in these events. It will feature Dutch journalist and author Leendert van der Valk, who recently published an article on this topic. Click ...
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NYT: The pandemic and the meaning of home

March 23, 2021

After so many months confined to our homes, The New York Times asked those who think about place - architects, urban policy experts, novelists - how our relationships with our homes have changed. One of the contributors is Princeton sociologist Matthew Desmond who ...
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Book discussion on Dutch women in the resistance

March 21, 2021

In honor of Women’s History Month, the U.S. Mission to the Netherlands and Resistance Museum Amsterdam will host an online conversation with American author Tim Brady on his latest book Three Ordinary Girls, which tells the story of Dutch resistance fighters Hannie Schaft and the sisters Truus and Freddie Oversteegen. On March 23rd, 4pm (CET)....
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Munich Dialogues on Democracy presents Robert B. Zoellick

March 18, 2021

On March 25th, 7pm (CET), Munich Dialogues on Democracy presents an online lecture by American politician, public official and former president of the World Bank, Robert B. Zoellick. He will talk about U.S. diplomacy and foreign policy in the past, the present and the future....
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New Yorker interviews T.C. Boyle

March 16, 2021

The New Yorker recently published T.C. Boyle's new story, titled The Shape of a Teardrop, about an adult man who refuses to move out of his parents’ house. In ...
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Book discussion Russell Shorto

March 16, 2021

Former John Adams director and best-selling author Russell Shorto grew up knowing his grandfather was a small-town mob boss. In his new book Smalltime, he takes on this part of his past. The American Book Center will interview the author online about this story on March 23rd, 7.30pm. Shorto took the John Adams stage as a guest speaker in ...
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American photographer wins Foam Paul Huf Award

March 14, 2021

American photographer John Edmonds is the winner of the 2021 Foam Paul Huf Award. His work questions issues of identity and power from an African-American perspective. The award is an internationally acclaimed prize to support upcoming talents, initiated by Foam, the photography museum in Amsterdam....
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How to Put Out Democracy’s Dumpster Fire

March 13, 2021

Our democratic habits have been killed off by an internet kleptocracy that profits from disinformation and polarization, writes Anne Applebaum in The Atlantic, together with Peter Pomerantsev. But is there a way to fix it? In 2012, the American journalist and historian visited the John Adams to talk about her book 'Iron...
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The New Yorker interviews Spike Lee

March 10, 2021

In this...
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Testimony of our landscape

By Richard Frishman

March 10, 2021

House and ambush site of state field secretary for the NAACP Medgar Evers (Jackson, Miss.). In 1963, he was gunned down in his driveway by a white supremacist. All human landscapes are embedded with cultural meaning. And since we rarely consider our constructions as evidence of our priorities, beliefs and behaviors, the testimonies our …...
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Article on Mark Rutte’s legacy in Foreign Policy

March 8, 2021

Although Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte's third term ended in political failure, his party is most likely to win the upcoming general elections, writes Dutch journalist Caroline de Gruyter for Foreign Policy. De Gruyter recently made a podcast (in Dutch) about her new book Beter...
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Seminar Russell Shorto: New York’s Dutch Beginnings

March 8, 2021

The New Netherland Institute presents a six-part seminar on New York's Dutch beginnings presented by former John Adams director Russell Shorto and Dennis Maika. Starting on March 18, the purpose of this seminar is to share the new view of New York’s beginnings with a wider audience, and to explore its influence on later American history....
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Speech Battle 2021

March 5, 2021

Who writes the best speech for Kamala Harris? In honor of International Women's Day, De Balie and deBuren will host the final of the Speech Battle 2021. On March 7 at 8pm, join the free livestream and help pick a winner. This event is in Dutch. (photo ©Gage Skidmore)....
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New book by Naomi Klein

March 5, 2021

Naomi Klein’s 8th book, How to Change Everything: A Young Human’s Guide to Protecting the Planet and Each Other is her 1st book written for young readers. Along with Rebecca Steffof, she adapts over 20 years of reporting and research on climate change and the movements that are trying to stop it. Klein visited the John Adams in 2014....
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The Original Sin

By Richard Frishman

March 3, 2021

A former ‘segregation wall,’ built to separate customers of color. Templin Saloon, Gonzales (TX). Slavery is often referred to as America’s “original sin.” Its demons still haunt us in the form of segregated housing, education, health care, employment. Through these photographs, I’m trying to preserve the physical evidence of tha