Please join the Charleston Library Society in welcoming Author David B. Peterson, Executive Director of the Onera Foundation, a private foundation dedicated to supporting historic preservation in the United States. Peterson will discuss his new book US Embassies of the Cold War: the Architecture of Democracy, Diplomacy and Defense. The lecture will dive into the details of how during the Cold War, the US State Department used modern architecture as a powerful form of cultural diplomacy, designing embassies to express the American ideals of a progressive, democratic society. Peterson 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.
Tickets*: PURCHASE HERE
$10 – Members or $15 – General Admission
About the Book:
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; Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, Eero Saarinen, Edward Durell Stone. The Cold War embassies are being decommissioned and sold, replaced by high-security compounds. The book is available at OneraFoundation.org. All proceeds from book sales will benefit the Onera Foundation and its mission to inform and engage the public about historic preservation and significant architecture.
“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
About David B. Peterson:
David B. Peterson is the Executive Director of the Onera Foundation, a private foundation dedicated to supporting historic preservation in the United States. Mr. Peterson is the Board Chair of the Harlem Academy School, an independent NYC school offering promising students a leading education regardless of economic circumstances. He serves on the Advisory Council of the Glass House, a National Trust Historic site in New Canaan, Connecticut, and is a board member of The Foundation for Art and Preservation in Embassies, a public-private partnership with the US State Department dedicated to providing permanent works of American art for U.S. embassies worldwide. He holds a BA from Dartmouth College, an MBA from New York University, and a MS in Historic Preservation from the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. US Embassies of the Cold War: The Architecture of Democracy, Diplomacy, and Defense is his first book.
