Projects
The Vroman Foundation organises and supports projects, a number of them are listed below. All these projects help keep Leo Vroman’s legacy alive, they include his scientific work, his poetry and his visual art. Leo was unique in his take on the combination of art and science but he wasn’t the only one. (This page is a living document and will be added to over time).
Art work 'Saying hi and Goodbye' unveiled 27 May 2021
The new work of art, made by artist Henrique van Putten, was unveiled yesterday in the presence of the alderman for culture in Gouda, Thierry van Vugt, people from the 'Groen Alliantie' and Noelle Gracy and her son Liam, on behalf of the Vroman Foundation. Due to the covid-19 measures the invited audience was small, but other interested people could follow the ceremony in a livestream. This livestream is still available : Onthulling kunstwerk - Goudse Hout (kunstwerkgoudsehout.nl)
Closer to Vroman – exhibition in the Naaldwijk Oude Kerk, extended to 20 May 2021
The Vroman Foundation and the BBV Protestant churches of Naaldwijk organised this exhibition in the Naaldwijk Oude Kerk (Wilhelminaplein 5) April 14-May 4 2021:
*
CloserToVroman
*
- Drawings, photographs and poems form the essence of the exhibition in this unusual setting.
- The iconic poem “Peace” gets its own image in the exhibition.
- Video and film clips are available to view in the vestry.
- Vroman’s last handwritten poem is also on display.
- The church is open between 12.00 and 16.00 on Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday
Design: Jetske Spanjer, Fred Tilders, Marien Brand
2020-2021 – Saying Hi and Goodbye, the population of Gouda decides
This was the headline in the Gouda Post newspaper on Wednesday 23 September 2020 in which the population of Gouda were asked to vote for two totally different artworks that were inspired by Leo Vroman’s poem Hallucinations:
We are the appearings
That fade so fast
That we are disappearings
Of nature
The Central Holland Green Alliance and the Vroman Foundation initiated this competition. Three artists were asked to base a “weather- and thug-proof” outdoor work of art on the poetry above. An unusual challenge compared to the safe confines of a museum or gallery.
The professional jury came down to two artworks after the presentations in July by all the artists. Because the works were so different the scores were tied at 4 to 4. So the city of Gouda was asked to cast the deciding vote. The winning artwork will be placed In the spring of 2021 in the meeting place in the newly renovated recreation area “The Gouda Woods”.
The Gouda-born artist Henrique van Putten is the winner with their work Saying hi and Goodbye. The runner up was David Habets. Both of them interpreted the rules in their own unique way to make two very different artworks.
More information in the Algemene Dagblad from 1 October 2020 (in Dutch)
2020, June – The second Vroman Fellowship in partnership with the Jan Van Eyck Academy in Maastricht. The new fellow is David Habets
Vroman Foundation members Janny Rodermond and Jetske Spanjer travelled to Maastricht in March to meet the new fellow (David) and the director of the van Eyck, Hicham Khalid. David is working hard on his project on lichen and starts his fellowship in June.
2019-2020 – Planning the ultimate biography of poet and scientist Leo Vroman
The feasibility of writing a definitive biography of Leo Vroman’s life and work and that of his wife (Tineke) is being investigated. These works are managed and maintained for future generations by the Vroman Foundation.
This is no simple task as the work is so broad. Obviously, Leo Vroman wrote a lot about himself, both about his life and his work, but a biography has not been written.
The Vroman Foundation is in discussion with the writer Atte Jongstra about the goals and costs for this project. The board is also in discussion with the Dutch Literary Museum and various funding bodies about the form, development and finances for this project.
It is clearly a significant task and we will keep you up to date here.
2018-2019 – Warm, Red, Wet and Sweet, Leo Vroman’s Blood (10 November 2018 – 5 May 2019)
In partnership with the Natural History Museum in Rotterdam, the Vroman Foundation presents the exhibition Warm, Red, Wet and Sweet, Leo Vroman’s Blood. The visitors will be introduced to his warm personality, his fascination for the red fluid, his curiosity for all living things and his love for Tineke, his wife.
His prison camp diary with the lizard skin shows how he maintained his interest in biology even in the worst of times. His original drawings of the then unnamed Vroman-effect give us a glimpse into his ground-breaking research into blood clotting. Vroman’s more personal side is illustrated by objects such as a shell he found while walking on a beach.
The exhibition included some other projects. The exhibition was also accessible for the many visitors during the bustling Rotterdam Museum Night on the 2nd of March. On the 25th of April haematologist Moniek de Maat gave the first Vroman Talk at the Natural History Museum.
A small vial with some of Leo and Tineke Vroman’s ashes form part of this exhibition. The vial is now officially part of the Natural History Museum’s permanent collection. The associate director of the museum, Niels de Zwarte, thanked the two Vroman daughters with the following letter:
20 January 2020
Dear Geri and Peggy,
Last year, after completing the exhibition about Leo Vroman, we received a share of the ashes from Leo and Tineke from James and Noelle as a donation to our museum.
This week we officially included the ashes of Leo and Tineke in our collection, registered under number NMR999000150838. You will find 3 photos of this as an attachment.
Their mixed ashes will be respectfully preserved in our Natural History Museum Rotterdam. And with that also the warm memory of the exhibition - a personal highlight of my museal year of 2019.
Thank you for all your efforts for the exhibition Red, warm, sweet & wet. To bring the poet closer and let us know more about the scientist. I am grateful for this wonderful collaboration.
Leo and Tineke will literally and figuratively have a place in the museum for ever.
2018 – November, plaque unveiled on Leo and Tineke Vroman’s ‘love seat’ bench in Utrecht
Eighty years ago, in November, Leo Vroman kissed Georgine (Tineke) Sanders for the first time on a bench in the Zocherpark in Utrecht.
A plaque was unveiled on a bench in this spot to commemorate this kiss. They both studied in Utrecht and got to know each other whilst still very young. Leo knew immediately that Tineke was the love of his life. Tineke had to think about it for a while.
Leo Vroman mentioned this kiss often in his poetry, Tineke remained his muse and only love until his death. The festive unveiling of the plaque was performed by the mayor of Utrecht, Jan van Zanen, in the presence of both of Leo and Tineke’s daughters Geri and Peggy and their families. The bench is known colloquially as the ‘Vromanbench’, a lovely place for (new) sweethearts to meet in Utrecht.
2018 - April - First Vroman Fellowship in co-operation with the Jan van Eyck Academie Maastricht
The young Russian artist Ilya Fedotov-Fedorov has been selected as the first Vroman Fellow by the Vroman Foundation and the Van Eyck. FedotovFedorov will start his six-month work period at the Jan van Eyck Academie –part of the Van Eyck– in April 2018 and will develop new work at the intersection of art and science.
Fedotov-Fedorov uses the language, and aesthetics of the natural sciences, museums of natural history and laboratories. An important theme in his work is existential loneliness. He often uses biological materials and technics, (e.g. images of ants and anthills, entomological collections cell structures and biological processes). Ilya Fedotov-Fedorov has been selected for this fellowship because of his versatile research and its visual potency.
The Van Eyck received no less than 126 applications for this work period. An indication that the multidisciplinary approach of the fellowship appeals to artists from all over the globe.
The Vroman Fellowship is a collaboration between the Vroman Foundation and the Van Eyck Academy in Maastricht, the Netherlands. In the spirit of the multitalented Leo Vroman (1915–2014), the Vroman Fellowship provides an artist/scientist/writer/ poet with a six-month working period at the Jan van Eyck Academie. The Vroman fellow can further develop his/her work in the Van Eyck’s multidisciplinary thinking, living, and working environment.
2015-2017 - 'Hoe Mooi Alles' bewerkt tot theaterstuk, toert door de Nederlandse Theaters
Van het onweerstaanbare liefdesverhaal van Leo en Tineke in het boek 'Hoe Mooi Alles' van Mirjam van Hengel, werd een indrukwekkende voorstelling gemaakt door Leon van der Sanden, met in de hoofdrollen Kees Hulst en Esther Scheldwacht. De voorstelling ging op 25 september 2015 in première in gezelschap van leden van de familie, schrijfster Mirjam van Hengel, die jarenlang nauw samenwerkte met Leo Vroman als de redacteur van zijn gedichten, leden van de Vroman Foundation en honderden theaterliefhebbers.
Het stuk toerde aanvankelijk tot eind december 2015 door heel Nederland en ging in 2016-2017 in reprise wegens groot succes en zeer lovende recensies.
2015-2016 ‘Leo Vroman the Artist’ is reprised
Leo Vroman, poet, scientist and artist, celebrated his 95th birthday on 10 April 2010. To commemorate this occasion the majority of his visual work was shown for the first time at the Weesperzijde gallery in Amsterdam. This exhibition took place in April-May 2010.
Leo Vroman is primarily recognised as a poet in the Netherlands. He published more than fifty poetry collections for some of which he earned prestigious prizes such as the P.C. Hooft prize for poetry. In America he is know as a scientist. His visual art remained relatively obscure in comparison. However he had been drawing for most of his life. Just as his literary, poetic and scientific work (which could be called the poetry of science) were intertwined with each other so was his visual art.
The exhibition displayed a large number of unknown drawings from the private collection of Leo and Tineke Vroman and their daughters Geri and Peggy, supplemented with work from the Dutch Literary Museum and from private collections. This was also the first time the Camp Diary was shown in digital form.
In the centenary of his birth this exhibition toured various locations in the Netherlands
- Gouda, de Chocoladefabriek
- Groningen, de universiteitsbibliotheek en Gronings Medisch Centrum
- Utrecht, Nacht van de Poëzie en Openbare Bibliotheek
- Zelhem, Galerie Bibliotheek
- Emmen, Centrum Beeldende Kunst Emmen
2015 – Sculpture of Leo Vroman unveiled on the roof of the Chocoladefabriek building in Gouda, Leo’s birthplace
Jeroen Henneman created a very accomplished portrait, a “standing sketch” (as Henneman calls it) of scientist/poet Leo Vroman in curved steel commissioned by the City of Gouda. On 10 April 2015 Leo Vroman who was born in Gouda would have been 100 years old. Even though he doubted that he would reach that age he said to the proponents “I don’t know if I’ll make it to 100 but celebrate it anyway”.
The sculpture was realised by contractors, Gouda city Council and the Vroman Foundation, who gave their complete support to the two promotors in order to complete the project.
To celebrate the sculpture’s unveiling both of the Vroman daughters, Geri and Peggy, grandchildren, other family members, friends and many others were invited to the Chocoladefabriek in Gouda. This is home to the library, a local central holland archive, the printer’s workshop and café Kruim.
Vroman night was organised at the same time with multiple artists and performances by the city’s poets. Information about Vroman can be found in two places in the Vroman Park that lies in front of the Chocoladefabriek: on the transformer housing a short distance from the main building and on a plaque on the wall under the sculpture. The park was designed by Jan David Zocher jr. and was renamed the Leo Vroman Park especially for this unveiling.
2015 - How Lovely it All Is
Mirjiam van Hengel, Leo Vroman’s editor at Querido and former president of the Vroman Foundation wrote ‘How Lovely it All Is. Leo and Tineke Vroman, love during wartime’. The book was published on 10 April 2014, Leo Vroman’s 99th birthday shortly after his death on 22 February of the same year.
Mirjam van Hengel captured the start and the growth of the first few years of the Leo, the poet, and Tineke, the anthropologist’s, very long marriage; she used their letters, diaries and conversations to bring their origin story to life.
Leo and Tineke met each other in Utrecht in 1938 where they were both students. After a tentative start, especially for Tineke, they fell in love. After the invasion of the Netherlands by the Nazis in May 1940 ethnically Jewish Leo Vroman fled from his parents’ house to Scheveningen by taxi and then by boat to England. From there he travelled to Tineke’s family in Indonesia. This is the start of an eventful period in the army and a Japanese prisoner of war camp where he wrote the famous camp diary.
Back in the Netherlands Tineke had no information about what has happened to him since he left. Their love is strong and they wait for each other, she finishes her studies. Leo’s journey has taken many twists and turns but he finally arrived at a relative’s house in New York. Eventually, two years after the war, in September 1947, they were reunited as Tineke arrives by boat in New York with her microscope in her luggage. Sometimes love is forever, they remain inseparable until Leo’s death in 2014.
The photograph on the cover is their ‘wedding photograph’ taken a day after Tineke arrived in New York.
2010-2012 First thoughts about the Vroman Stipendium (Fellowship)
As long ago as 2010 a grant, stipend or fellowship in Leo’s name was being considered by the Foundation. In 2017 this was realised with the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht and the first fellow was appointed in 2018. These are Leo’s thoughts on the matter:
To me, the primary aim of the Vroman Foundation is to find and encourage financially or otherwise a mutual close relationship between all sciences and all forms of art. I am sure there is a beauty in our world that has not yet been shown and could not be expressed without either one of these two fields.
Leo Vroman
Fort Worth, July 12 2012
*
It seems to me that aging leads to a desire for unification. Aging of gods led to the wish for one single God, aging states wish for states to unite as a single nation, aging national governments wish for a single world nation with a united world government, the aging theory of relativity and the aging Einstain led to a wish for a united theory, in evolution proteins united to form cells, cells in an organism lead to united external activities, and I, also aging, wish for a brain activity that unites all activities, in my case science, poetry and art into a single, probably not yet named, Thing.
I have not yet succeeded. I keep remembering the one instance, when Tineke reading my introduction for a scientific paper, asked: This word has two meanings; which one do you mean? I said: Both of course; and she answered something like: But Leo, this is not supposed to be a poem and you cannot do this in a scientific article. That was true then and is true now. Similarly, when I drew a concept such as the way an instrument functions or the way the endothelium may behave under stress, I could not allow myself to be “artistic”, but merely to be truthful.
Still, I believe better unification must be possible, so I hope the Foundation will be able to find and support more promising work than mine.
Some examples:
1. A scientific search for the causes of an urge to write poetry.
2. Function scan of the brain while thinking of writing, drawing, etc.
3. Entanglement clarified by art, music, poetry: what it means to our interpretation of reality (space and time).
4. Nanotechnology applied to any field.
Leo Vroman
Fort Worth, December 18 2010
2010 Exhibition at Weesperzijde and publication of Leo Vroman Artist
Leo Vroman, poet, scientist and artist, celebrated his 95th birthday on 10 April 2010. To commemorate this occasion the majority of his visual work was shown for the first time at the Weesperzijde gallery in Amsterdam. This exhibition took place in April-May 2010.
Leo Vroman is primarily recognised as a poet in the Netherlands. He published more than fifty poetry collections for some of which he earned prestigious prizes such as the P.C. Hooft prize for poetry. In America he is know as a scientist. His visual art remained relatively obscure in comparison. However he had been drawing for most of his life. Just as his literary, poetic and scientific work (which could be called the poetry of science) were intertwined with each other so was his visual art.
The exhibition displayed a large number of unknown drawings from the private collection of Leo and Tineke Vroman and their daughters Geri and Peggy, supplemented with work from the Dutch Literary Museum and from private collections. This was also the first time the Camp Diary was shown in digital form.
2010 Leo Vroman Artist, the book
The book ‘Leo Vroman Artist’ was published to commemorate his 95th
birthday. This book was one of the qualifiers for the Best Dutch Book Designs 2010 and was nominated for the German Design Award.
The book has so many qualities, it contains many different techniques and imagery; cartoons, comic strips, self portraits, pages from his Camp Diary, illustrated poems, quick sketches, computer generated work, and the complex ‘subway drawings’ he made during his commute to and from the university in New York. This book is not only the first time we really get to know Leo Vroman as an artist but also it is remarkable as he is the central character and leads you through the book. It is a delightfully playful and also moving book. A book that does justice to Vroman’s vigorous versatility. A book that you can just pick up and let the pictures tell the story.
Leo Vroman Tekenaar, ISBN 978 94 90647 018 (in Dutch)
The book was reprinted in 2019 and is available in bookshops.
Sometimes love lasts forever – a documentary about Leo and Tineke Vroman by Yke Bertels
This beautiful 35 minute documentary by Ike Bertels from 2009 made for the TV series Profiel is still available online through NPO Start. The documentary was rebroadcast to celebrate Leo Vroman’s birthday (10 April 1915 – 22 February 2014). Love, Life and Death are the central themes of poets Leo and Tineke Vroman. Their unconditional love is powerfully present in this film; both of them have died since this was broadcast.