This Sunday Dutch Prime Minister Balkenende will visit the Brooklyn Museum, joined by Minister of Foreign Affairs Verhagen and Minister for Development Cooperation Koenders.
As we wrote before, the Brooklyn museum is hosting various special events this year around the Schenck Houses, two early Dutch colonial houses. The wooden houses suggest the way a Dutch American family might have lived in Brooklyn over a period of 150 years. They were moved to the Brooklyn museum in 1929 and 1964, and after a renovation in 2007 they are standing next to each other on the fourth floor of the museum.
Breuckelen, as its first name was, was named for Breukelen in the province of Utrecht in the Netherlands when it was authorized by the Dutch West India Company in 1646. Brooklyn's official motto is still in old-Dutch: Eendraght Maeckt Maght. Obviously a source of pride for the 'original Brooklyn' in Utrecht, there is a special website to celebrate the Brooklyn Connection, part of BrooklynBridgeBreukelen.
The American edition of Four Centuries of Dutch-American Relations, 1609-2009 will be officially launched in Washington, DC this Friday.
The book examines the ties between the Netherlands and the United States. That this is a long and extensive relationship is shown by the size of the book. It is written by nearly one hundred Dutch and American scholars and with almost 1,000 pages it weighs more than 5 pounds.
The Wilson Center, in in cooperation with the Netherland-America Foundation, Roosevelt Study Center, and the Embassy of the Netherlands, will host the official presentation and a discussion of U.S.-Dutch relations this Friday; over the next weeks there will be several other presentations of the book in the US and in the Netherlands.
In attendance in Washington DC will be Renée Jones-Bos, Ambassador of the Netherlands to the United States, L. Paul Bremer III, former U.S. Ambassador to the Netherlands and Ernst H. van der Beugel, Professor of Diplomatic History of Atlantic Cooperation at the University of Leiden, the Netherlands. The editors of the book will be in attendance also: Cornelis A. van Minnen, Director of the Roosevelt Study Center and Professor of American History at Ghent University, Belgium, Hans Krabbendam, Assistant Director of the Roosevelt Study Center and Giles Scott-Smith, Senior Researcher at the Roosevelt Study Center.
The book is now available on Amazon for $39.95 for a hardcover edition. It is published by Boom in Amsterdam (ISBN 9789085066538) and State University of New York Press in Albany, New York (ISBN13: 978-1-4384-3013-3).
With the NY400 week now officially over and Crown Prince Willem Alexander and Princess Maxima back in The Hague today to open the parliamentary year, there are still plenty of events in the New York area.
In addition to the art exhibitions we wrote about earlier there are a number of other museums that pay special attention to the celebration of Dutch American ties.
Here's a list with 10 museum exhibitions throughout the next few months:
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Today historical linguist Nicoline van der Sijs will present the first copy of her bookCookies, Coleslaw and Stoops on the influence of the Dutch language on American English and the languages of the Native Americans.
The book will be presented in New York City as part of the celebrations of New York's 400 years existence.
"From Santa Claus (after the Dutch folklore saint Sinterklaas) and his sleigh (the pronunciation of the Dutch slee is almost identical) to a dumbhead talking poppycock, the contributions of the Dutch language to American English are indelibly embedded to some of our most vernacular terms and expressions."
The Dutch title is Yankees, Cookies en Dollars -- it's interesting that different words were selected for the Dutch title than for the American title (Cookies, Coleslaw, and Stoops).
Two very interesting art exhibitions will open for the public in New York City this week.
First, Vermeer's famous melkmeisje painting will be in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and there'll be a beautiful display with all five of the Met's Vermeer paintings. This exhibition will run from September 10 through November 29.
Second, the South Street Seaport museum in NYC will have a exhibition on New Amsterdam, the first settlement on Manhattan. The Schaghen letter is on loan to the museum. The Schaghen letter is usually in the National Archives of the Netherlands in The Hague, it contains the earliest known reference to the 'sale' of Manhattan to the Dutch. New Amsterdam: The Island at the Center of the World will run from September 12, 2009 to January 3, 2010.
Finally, don't forget the Judith Leyster exhibition in Washington D.C. that we wrote about earlier; it will be on display through November 29.
On a related note: the North Carolina Museum of Art will close its doors for a renovation this Labor Day; it will reopen in April 2010.
This is an overview of Dutch and Indonesian ingredients that Guus, one of our correspondents, has found in the Triangle area in North Carolina. He moved to the United States five years ago and there are certain flavors that he just cannot go without. This overview may also help you if you live in other parts of the country.
As a regular rule, you can get pretty much everything via mail order, and of course you can get things shipped from Holland. But it's nice to know that many products are available locally as well. The list below is about the ingredients. There are many good books & websites about dishes such as boerenkool and stamppot -- what we're trying to do is give you suggestions on where to find the right rookworst to accompany it!
If you have suggestions or questions please add a comment and we'll be glad to update it. At the end of the article you'll find details of the stores mentioned.
"'Ve-le-is-sing-nen.' (Or so it sounded to us.) That was definitely a V sound in the beginning, but then it got lost in a slosh of vowels and S’s."
The New York Times has an interview with Ms. Jones-Bos, the Dutch ambassador to the United States to talk about the Dutch pronunciation of names in NYC.
This Sunday Dutch Prime Minister Balkenende will visit the Brooklyn Museum, joined by Minister of Foreign Affairs Verhagen and Minister for Development Cooperation Koenders.
The American edition of Four Centuries of Dutch-American Relations, 1609-2009 will be officially launched in Washington, DC this Friday. 
Today historical linguist Nicoline van der Sijs will present 
Two very interesting art exhibitions will open for the public in New York City this week.
This is an overview of Dutch and Indonesian ingredients that Guus, one of our correspondents, has found in the Triangle area in North Carolina. He moved to the United States five years ago and there are certain flavors that he just cannot go without. This overview may also help you if you live in other parts of the country.
"'Ve-le-is-sing-nen.' (Or so it sounded to us.) That was definitely a V sound in the beginning, but then it got lost in a slosh of vowels and S’s."