Views of America - by StateDept - U.S. Department of State

SubscribeSign in

Views of America

StateDept<br>May 07, 2026

347

81<br>42

Share

Author: U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio<br>On March 31, 2026, Rizzoli released Views of America: The Diplomatic Reception Rooms at the U.S. Department of State, a richly illustrated volume celebrating the fine and decorative arts housed in 42 rooms at the Harry S. Truman building in Washington D.C. These rooms, which are open to the public, are home to a significant yet little-known cultural collection.<br>Thanks for reading U.S. Department of State! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Subscribe

Many of the objects in the Diplomatic Reception Rooms were created, owned, and used by the men and women who dreamed of self-government and who made independence a reality. The collection reflects the pride, craftsmanship, and spirit of 18th- and early 19th-century America.<br>Remarkably, the Rooms and their collection were constructed, amassed, and continue to be maintained exclusively through the private gifts of philanthropic and patriotic individuals. Collectively, they are a testimony to the civic engagement and generosity of the American people and to their desire to advance American diplomacy.<br>In celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and the birth of our nation, Secretary of State Marco Rubio penned the following foreword to Views of America:<br>Perhaps the greatest architectural symbol of American diplomatic hospitality is named in honor not of a Secretary of State or President but of one of our first diplomats. At first glance, the monumental Benjamin Franklin State Dining Room – with its gold-topped neoclassical columns, expansive and sumptuous carpets in the style of the finest 18th century British country estates, and magnificent views of our capital city – might seem at odds with the homespun reputation of the father of American diplomacy.

This porcelain group depicts Louis XVI of France in courtly martial costume, united with the American cause for independence, represented by Benjamin Franklin, plainly clothed and gesturing humbly.<br>But on reflection, besides being an appropriate tribute to an American hero, the room reflects the uniquely American perspective on diplomacy that developed even from Franklin’s vital diplomatic mission during the Revolutionary War, when he set sail for France in the months following our Declaration of Independence two hundred and fifty years ago.<br>In the Court of Versailles, Franklin presented an image of America that was cultured, literate, witty, and at the forefront of scientific research in its leisurely mid-eighteenth-century mode. At the same time, by intentionally setting aside the fashionable clothes he had worn in his earlier 1767 visit in favor of a more frontier-like demeanor, with a homely brown suit, spectacles and (famously) a large fur hat, he symbolized a new democratic polity. Franklin intrigued his audience in the court of Louis XVI through this synthesis of Old World charm with the virtues of the New World to create an American original.<br>Perhaps, Franklin was making the most of things in his own canny way. One suspects that he did not usually wear the rustic fur cap with which he charmed the Parisian salons when he was out and about on the streets of Philadelphia. But the contrast of these two missions to France, the rejection of a mere imitation and an embrace of the power of an authentic American perspective, reflects a deeper truth about the wellsprings of American diplomacy.<br>In the courts of the European powers, American diplomats faced key disadvantages. In the social milieu of diplomacy, rank, seniority, and access depended in part upon the personal rank of diplomats within the aristocratic hierarchies of Europe. Emissaries representing monarchs attained diplomatic privileges that those representing republics did not. The United States, a republic headed by a lowly citizen, ranked lower in diplomatic etiquette than the smallest European monarchy until well into the 19th century.

Many of the objects in the Diplomatic Reception Rooms were created, owned, and used by revolutionary Americans.<br>The United States did not have many diplomats from families found in the Almanach de Gotha or Debrett’s Peerage. So, what could this young country hang its diplomacy on? The answer that began to emerge, even in the waning days of colonial rule, was an emphasis on classical inheritance and excellence in all that we did.<br>The Founding Fathers and their generation did not believe themselves to be colonial subjects of one far-flung outpost of the British Empire. Rather, they understood themselves to be inheritors of a great tradition, the descendants (through a British common law branch) of Christian Europe and of classical Greco-Roman civilization. The foundations of statesmanship they learned in Plutarch, Cicero, and Aristotle were more ancient and prestigious than any...