House talks

A couple of talks we had at Ashwell last week.

400 years of Rembrandt

2006 marks the 400th anniversary of Rembrandt van Rijn's birth. Our speaker was an art historian, a retired surgeon. He went through Rembrandt's life story, showing slides of paintings as we went. The second part of his talk focused on Rembrandt's religious paintings, most notably Abraham and Isaac, The Feast of Belshazzar, and The Return of the Prodigal Son.

The image above shows two of Rembrandt's several self-portraits. The left one was painted in 1640 and the other, 1669. You can see the change in his outlookfrom the way he sees himself. These two are in National Gallery, which has a good number of Rembrandts.

The future of Latin America

Alan Gilbert, head of Geography at University College London, and Diego Sanchez Ancochea, also from the University of London, spoke to us about Latin America. I thought it would be good to know about it, as we have a shared Spanish colonial history with them. There were many similarities in what the speakers said, especially in terms of globalization and neoliberalism. The latter worked in some countries, but not in others. What is common in the region is the increase in inequality, the gap between the rich and the poor.

How do we address inequality? I would say education, but I could be too optimistic. There is no single solution and many factors are at play. Whatever happens, the speakers believe that Latin America will survive, as it has always done. And that is good to know.