For the first Modern Conversations presentation of the new year please join us as we welcome David B. Peterson who will speak about his new book US Embassies of the Cold War: the Architecture of Democracy, Diplomacy and Defense. During the Cold War, the US State Department used Modern architecture as a powerful form of cultural diplomacy, designing embassies to express the ideals of a progressive, democratic society. Peterson’s talk will expand on the little-known story of the US State Department’s bid to win international hearts and minds through the strategic use of modernist architecture and cultural diplomacy at the height of the international conflict between communism and democracy.

US Embassies of the Cold War: the Architecture of Democracy, Diplomacy and Defense is a large-format, photo-driven book featuring the fourteen most significant midcentury modern American embassies designed by leading architects, including: Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, Eero Saarinen, and Edward Durell Stone. Today, the Cold War embassies are being decommissioned and sold, replaced by high-security compounds.

“[This book] is an open-eyed investigation into the results of the unlikely meeting between progressive culture and public policy at a particular moment in time. With an extraordinary collection of photographs and graphics not seen elsewhere, Peterson enables us to know that past, reckon with what was once significant, and learn about options that may exist today or tomorrow in a rapidly changing global landscape.”

– Historian and author Jane Loeffler, Ph.D