I was in The Hague this past Thursday for a scholarship awards ceremony. I shuddered when I first read the program and realized that we were scheduled to do paintings together as as "get to know each other" activity. But shame on me, it really was a lot of fun! We were asked to paint a canvas with our ideas we had about the Netherlands. Below you can see the process from start to finish. I am responsible for the extremely tall man standing "around" a bicycle that someone else painted. There were interesting speaches too, particularly that from the Gemeentemuseum curator who talked about Dutch art in the 19th century and its relation with international exchanges and influences. One interesting point: from his perspective, the French occupation at the start of the 19th century was in many ways a good thing, at least for Dutch art and artists.

Further below, pictures of other Tinbergen Institute students receiving their diploma from the chair of the selection committee, Dutch Nobel Prize winning physicist Gerard 't Hooft. His work that got him the prize, according to the Nobel website: "elucidating the quantum structure of electroweak interactions". Not bad, not bad.