Tucked away behind the modern exterior of the Harry S. Truman Building in the center of Washington, D.C., lies an extraordinary, yet little known, treasure: the Diplomatic Reception Rooms at the U.S. Department of State. Over the last six decades, these 42 state rooms, where secretaries of state and foreign dignitaries have gathered to conduct diplomacy, have been transformed into gems of classical architecture designed by the renowned architects Edward Vason Jones, Walter M. Macomber, John Blatteau, and Allan Greenberg and filled with exceptional American art and artifacts. Created for the unique purpose of statecraft, the rooms showcase aspects of the American character and the principles of the nation's founders.
A magnificent setting for diplomacy, these state rooms also house one of the most important collections of American fine and decorative arts in the world, containing more than 5,000 works of art, many with storied provenances: paintings by John Singleton Copley, Gilbert Stuart, Thomas Cole, and Albert Bierstadt; silver by Paul Revere and porcelain owned by George and Martha Washington and other presidential families; fine furniture; early maps and documents; and prints and drawings by Fanny Palmer and Childe Hassam, as well as works important for their diplomatic associations.
Now, new photography of the rooms, highlighting their superb architecture with many never-before-seen views, and of some 150 individual works of art accompanies scholarly essays that explore the collection's breadth and importance. Together they provide the fullest telling to date of how the rooms came to be, their astounding architectural transformation, the development of the extraordinary holdings, and the way the rooms have come to represent our nation as America's Collection.
By Virginia B. Hart with Bri Brophy, Laaren Brown, Elliot Bostwick Davis, Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, Allan Greenberg, Mark Alan Hewitt, John F. Kerry, Alexandra Alevizatos Kirtley, Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser, David M. Rubenstein, Stacy Schiff, Carolyn Vaughan, and Deborah Dependahl Waters
Hardcover: 352 Pages
Dimensions: 9.27 x 1.25 x 12.31 inches