Best of Van Gogh Birthday Celebrations

In case you didn't know it, 2015 is the 162nd birthday year of our man Vincent. There were many great and not-so-great celebrations of this sobering passage of time this year, but here are the best. And how did I judge them to be the best? Entirely from my biased viewpoint, of course! If you know of any other celebrations worth noting, feel free to leave info or links in the comments section.

Here we go now:

Commemorative Coin

I guess it only made "cents" that a coin would be made to celebrate Vincent.  In this case, the amount is 5 Euros and 10 Euros, a denomination that did not exist during all of Vincent's short life. Actually, I cheated a little to include this on the list. The coins came out years ago, but I just found about them this year SO THERE.

Minneapolis Institute of Art's Honkin' Big Recreation of "Olive Trees"

Going to fly into the Minneapolis Airport anytime soon? Or perhaps you recently had a flight and looked out the window and thought you were losing what was left of your mind? Well, you will or may have already checked out the massive recreation of Van Gogh's Olive Trees in a field near the airport. The work was commissioned by the Minneapolis Institute of Art (MIA) and done by "earthworks artist" Stan Herd. No, I don't know what Stan heard, but it looks like you can dance to it. Wow!

Starry Night Grown in a Petri Dish

Now, scientists get a bad rap by those of an artistic employment. But scientists are highly creative individuals, as shown by members of the American Society for Microbiology. Van Gogh's big birthday coincided nicely with the first art contest put on by the society. The canvas was a petri dish (or succession of them) and the paint were different colored strains of bacteria. Now that's taking art to new levels and to new species.

The Google Doodle

Because they had to. (This originally went up in 2005.)

And a special shout out to

The Dahlia Parade in Zundert, Netherlands

In September, there was a flower parade to end all flower parades -- for Van Gogh fans, anyway. Floats a mere 62 feet long celebrating Van Gogh's works. Floats took about a year to make and were mostly made up of 50 species of dahlia flowers. The Rose Bowl got nuthin' on this. Well done, Zundert. More photos can be found here.