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United States News Title: Madeleine Albright's Diplomatic Jewelry: 'Read My Pins' at Smithsonian Let me start by saying I am a jewelry junkie. Gold. Silver. Brass. Glass. Bakelite. Fakelite. Mother of Plastic. Cultured Pearl. Titanium. Rubber. Leather. Feather. It doesn't matter. I love every piece I own. And when I need a really serious fix of eye-popping eye candy, I head over to the Smithsonian's Natural History Museum to ogle the Hope Diamond. Now, just in time for summer, there is a new exhibition of baubles, many of them frankly fake, at the nearby Smithsonian Castle on the National Mall. They belong to former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who famously turned her bodice into a diplomatic sign board in late 1994 while U.N. ambassador, and never looked back. The oft-told tale goes likes this: After publicly trashing Saddam Hussein for days, Albright was denounced by a Baghdad poet as "an unparalleled serpent." And so to meet with Iraqi officials, she wore a golden snake entwined on a branch, a diamond dangling from its mouth. That sly, 18k-middle finger salute was a perfect ladylike gesture befitting the first woman to smash the State Department's glass ceiling. Once the media got the message, Albright had herself a new, very personal tool of statecraft. Call it telegraphy by fashion accessory. "I can't imagine seeing Henry Kissinger using pins as a foreign policy tool," she told me with a knowing smile. But Madame Secretary made it work over the years, while also giving herself a ready excuse to haunt bazaars, jewelry shops and antiques shows the world over. Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov of Russia received at least two shoulder-launched signals: A jeweled bug worn after Kremlin listening devices were found inside State Department walls; and a four-inch abstract arrow he mistook for an Interceptor missile, when the two sparred over arms control. Her message? "As you can see, we make them very small. So you'd better be ready to negotiate." There were multiple choices for peace talks. Turtles or snails signaled slow negotiations; a crab meant aggravation and mushrooms were for tricky issues best discussed in the dark, not in public. In keeping with the Muhammad Ali mantra, "float like a butterfly, sting like a bee," she often wore a winged insect to meetings to indicate whether she was leaning toward delicate and transformational change or aggressive, difficult discussions. The was no missing the menacing antique bee she wore to a session with Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat. The pin collection grew quickly and came to include everything from expensive, antique pieces of Americana (she splurged on a splendid gold, diamond and ruby eagle for her historic swearing-in) to glitzy costume pieces depicting flowers, birds, shoes, sailboats and American flags. Many of them Albright acquired because they simultaneously spoke to her own inner shopper and to world leaders, whether ally or enemy. She enraged Vladmir Putin of Russia, who refused to discuss Chechnya during talks in Moscow, by wearing three simian symbols of his silence: hear- see- and speak-no-evil monkeys. Some pins were presented by heads of state or ranking dignitaries; others came from friends, even after she left the State Department in 2001. (Albright currently heads Washington-based global consulting and investment groups). Even total strangers got on board. One emotional presentation came at the D-Day Museum in New Orleans in 2006, a year after Hurricane Katrina. A man handed her the diamond and amethyst brooch that his father, a World War II veteran with two purple hearts, had given his mother on their 50th anniversary. She adored Albright, and had died as a result of the storm, the son told her, and "My father and I think she would have wanted you to have it." Last year, after much prodding from longtime aide Elaine Shocas, Albright finally finished "Read My Pins: Stories from a Diplomat's Jewel Box," with photos of the carefully curated baubles. True to her academic roots -- she still teaches at Georgetown University -- Albright provided an instructive if brief survey of the political-social history of jewelry, from ancient crowns as symbols of power to 21st-century American flag lapel pins as political litmus tests for politicians. "The world has its share of power ties; the time seemed right for the mute eloquence of pins with attitude," she writes. The collection of more than 200 opened New York's Museum of Arts and Design last fall (Barbra Streisand, an old Albright pal, dropped by the preview soiree) and went on to the Clinton Library in Little Rock, Arkansas. Now, just in time for summer tourists, it's at the Smithsonian Castle, that red brick jewel box of Victorian architecture, where it runs from June 18 to Oct. 11. What makes "Read My Pins" worth seeing (for starters, it's free) is the history conveyed even by the kitschy pieces: A fish worn to discuss the salmon trade with Canadian officials, hot air balloons for high hopes, bejeweled zebras for a session with South Africa's Nelson Mandela. And her all time favorite, a pink clay heart made by daughter Katie at age 5. Two of her abstract pins use common materials to send powerful messages. Fragments of the Berlin Wall celebrate its 1989 destruction and the unraveling of the Soviet Union, while shards of fused glass symbolize Albright's shattering of the State Department's old-boy ceiling. There is also a bit of social and cultural history here, from Albright's girlhood when young ladies were only supposed to receive jewelry from older relatives and men. Her Czech-born parents gave her a suite of fine Bohemian garnets, a gold pin and a flashy diamond and emerald ring that her mother grudgingly accepted from Yugoslav strongman Marshal Tito (her father was the Czech envoy so refusal was not possible). Albright's (now ex) husband gave her his frat pin and a few small, good pieces; his family added others. It was only when Albright became her own woman in the 1980s, first as an academic and later as a diplomat and foreign policy adviser to Democratic presidential candidates, that she began spending her own money on serious as well as playful pins. In the liberating last two decades of the last century, each pin was like a battle ribbon from a long campaign known as I Came, I Wanted In, I Worked My Ass Off, I Am Woman, and Damn, I Deserve it. "One might scoff and say that my pins didn't exactly shake the world," she writes. "To that I can reply only that shaking the world is precisely the opposite of what diplomats are placed on Earth to do." As for what jewelry junkies are placed on Earth to do, Albright wastes neither words nor time describing the fantasy pin that best captures her essence. "Tall and thin." Amen, sister.
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