Van Gogh Museum

Lots of good restaurants, lots of cool views.

The Van Gogh Museum was very nice.

The Heineken experience was cool.

I did go to a spooky place in Amsterdam.

But they did more than that.

They helped me arrange BTS tickets to the Van Gogh Museum, which I'm very excited, even though I'm not a huge Van Gogh or even really an art museum person.

I have never been to the Rijksmuseum, which is like one of the largest art museums in the world.

And it's right there in Amsterdam.

But I just finished reading about the Van Gogh Museum and And it's a fictional book, but it's based on some nonfiction truth.

The Paris Heist by Joe Piazza.

If it's not on your TBR, it should be.

It's a really good book.

My first visit to Amsterdam.

I've already seen the Concertgebouw from the Van Gogh Museum this morning.

I spent yesterday sampling Dutch bicycling culture.

A not-so-short ride out to a place where there's some old...

Have you been to some already, Gabriella?

Jacob, how did you know? Some of the most well-known ones, and ones that I would personally recommend, are Het Van Gogh Museum, or the Van Gogh Museum, and Het Rijksmuseum, or the National Museum, which is home to one of my favourite paintings, Rembrandt's Night Watch.

The Night Watch is basically a large painting and, well, you'll have to go and see it for yourself, but it's pretty impressive.

You sure like your art, Gabriella.

And then I connect the two timelines together through a missing Vincent van Gogh painting.

And my research, I went to the Van Gogh Museum and the Van Gogh Library, and I got access to Jo's diaries, some of which were written in English because she was practicing English at the time.

I've read through every letter that still exists that she wrote to her husband, Theo, every letter that Theo and Vincent wrote to each other.

And I've spent a lot of time with art historians, with curators, with artists themselves as they were painting to understand their process and how they really took in art and how art became a part of them.

Meanwhile, you're getting your stuff done.

Yeah, yeah.

But Nick also came with me to Amsterdam and to Bussum, where Joe is from, and, you know, came with me to the Van Gogh Museum and the Van Gogh Library and also the Ricks Museum.

And he's also my first reader.

And the fact that they just have to wait to announce a special card pack, and they know it's going to sell out in minutes.

A very good example of this was when the Van Gogh Museum announced a collaboration with Pokemon, which basically combined the drawings of Pokemon with famous artworks as well.

And the only

way you could get them is to visit the Van Gogh Museums in Europe.

Not regular people, people who went with the intent of collecting and buying and selling, they went.

The same thing happened with McDonald's, when McDonald's and Pokemon had a collaboration as well.

And they are pretty extraordinary pictures.

And the one I want to focus on is a picture called Tree Roots, which is in the Van Gogh Museum.

It's not his most famous picture, but it is probably his very last painting.

He makes it in July 1890.

It's really upsetting.

Yeah.

I remember looking at this work in an exhibition at the Van Gogh Museum quite a few years ago now, and talking to a curator there called Nienke Bakker.

Mm.