Our evenings combine a lecture or reading by the invited guest and a discussion on stage with our specially selected moderator. Add in questions from the audience and we can promise a fascinating and lively discussion! Our events are hosted at various locations in Amsterdam. Check each event announcement for location.
Holly Krieger
| The Beauty of Symmetry through the eyes of a Mathematician
Oct 10, 2017, 6:00 pm -
7:30 pm,
Spaces Zuidas, Barbara Strozzilaan 101 Amsterdam
We are pleased to announce that renowned American mathematician Holly Krieger will visit the John Adams to discuss how mathematics can be used to describe the beauty of symmetry. For centuries, symmetry has fascinated philosophers, astronomers, mathematicians, artists, architects and physicists. It is a prevalent aesthetic theme in the art and architecture of many cultures, and is found all throughout nature. A human face, for example, is found to be more attractive when it is symmetrical. But why is symmetry so satisfying?
Holly ... Read more
Dan Brown – Sold Out
| Origin
Oct 22, 2017, 3:00 pm -
4:30 pm,
Paradiso, Weteringschans 6-8, 1017 SG Amsterdam
Dan Brown, the world’s most popular thriller writer, returns to the John Adams to discuss his new novel Origin, translated into Dutch as De Oorsprong by Luitingh Sijthoff. Unfolding entirely in Spain —Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, and Bilbao, the home of the Guggenheim Museum —Origin thrusts Harvard symbologist Langdon into the intersection of two of humankind’s most enduring questions: Where do we come from? Where are we going?
Origin follows ... Read more
Colson Whitehead
| The Underground Railroad
Dec 06, 2017, 8:00 pm -
9:30 pm,
De Rode Hoed, Keizersgracht 102, Amsterdam
Colson Whitehead is the biggest literary sensation of this decade. He was the first author since Annie Proulx to win both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for his novel The Underground Railroad (translated as De Ondergrondse Spoorweg by Atlas Contact). Several prominent figures also declared it their favorite novel, including President Obama. Written with “deadpan virtuosity ... Read more
Amsterdam Stories
| Rob Rombout and Rogier van Eck
Dec 11, 2017, 8:00 pm -
9:30 pm,
De Balie, Kleine-Gartmanplantsoen 10
Have the Netherlands left a mark on the US? Come find out on December 11th, when the Belgian filmmakers Rob Rombout and Rogier van Eck show a compilation of their road movie in which they take you all across the continent to visit all the American places named Amsterdam. On their journey through cities, towns, streets and parishes they go in search of those experiences and smalltown stories that reveal an untold America. In each Amsterdam, we meet key figures who offer a picture of America's past and present ... Read more