An unusual collaboration between a criminologist and an artist asks the question: What happens when we observe the courtroom as if it were a landscape? In 2021, the criminologist Tasniem Anwar enlisted Machteld Aardse, a Dutch multi-media artist and former courtroom sketch artist, to create a series of drawings to accompany her thesis on terrorism trials in the Netherlands. Visiting 12 different Dutch trials—the crimes ranged from terror financing to the violent attacks against Maccabi football fans last year—Aardse produced over 250 sketches, each annotated with quotations and notes from the scene depicted. The pastel illustrations, done in a more impressionistic style than typical courtroom sketches, infuse the collection with a sense of empathy. “Pastel is a soft medium,” Aardse explained. “It is also vulnerable—human.” These illustrations are now on view at the Amsterdam Courthouse. —Paulina Prosnitz