NEW YORK — Madeleine Albright’s penchant for pins became newsworthy in the 1990s after the Iraqi press published a poem calling her an “unparalleled serpent” for daring to criticize Saddam Hussein.

Facing a meeting with Iraqis in October 1994, Albright dug through her jewelry and affixed a Victorian-era serpent pin to her suit. A reporter asked about the significance of the accessory, and Albright — then the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations — replied that it was “just my way of sending a message.”

The gold and diamond pin (circa 1860) is among 300 pins in the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) exhibition titled “Read My Pins: The Madeleine Albright Collection.”

The Sunday after Christmas, a friend and I peered at the pin in the museum’s Tiffany & Co. Gallery in New York City and chuckled at Albright’s response to the poem. Leave it to our nation’s first female secretary of state (President Bill Clinton appointed her in 1997) to find a signature way to make a point with her adversaries.

“I think the snake pin is a really important one (historically),” said Dorothy Twining Globus, MAD’s curator of exhibitions during a phone interview. “It’s just important from the standpoint that the press noticed she was wearing a snake because Hussein’s people had called her an ‘unparalleled serpent.’ ”

An exhibition card near the snake includes this tidbit: Albright loathes real snakes.

'Part of my personal diplomatic arsenal'
The pins seem to have taken on a public life of their own, she writes in her book, “Read My Pins: Stories From a Diplomat's Jewel Box” (HarperCollins, $40).

“Before long, and without intending it,” Albright writes, “I found that jewelry had become part of my personal diplomatic arsenal. Former president George H. W. Bush had been known for saying ‘Read my lips.’ I began urging colleagues and reporters to ‘Read my pins.’ ”

Foreign dignitaries and their spouses caught on to her affinity, sometimes presenting her with pins symbolizing their country or their own hopes for the future.

In some peace negotiations Albright would wear a dove pin given by Leah Rabin, whose husband, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, was assassinated in 1995.

Albright also occasionally wore a bee pin as a sign that “we were about to let someone know what our sting meant,” she tells CBS-TV anchor Katie Couric in an interview.

Organized by themes
Globus organized the pins by themes, including flowers, insects, butterflies, birds, animals, patriotic symbols like eagles and flags, musical instruments, shoes, spaceships (she’s a Trekkie) and the dreaded reptiles.   

So, what’s it like to pick through a famous diplomat’s jewelry box to decide which pins should be included in a public exhibition? Globus and a colleague soon discovered that Albright didn’t use a jewelry box (despite the book’s title) to store her vast collection. She uses hanger bags intended for shoes.

“We went down to Washington and sat at her dining room table” as Albright brought out bag after bag, she recalled. “It was really fun. ... We heard which ones had the big stories” as well as gems like “if I’m feeling snappish, I wear this turtle.”    

About 100,000 visitors have checked out the collection since the September debut at MAD, according to the museum.

The pins range from costume jewelry to elaborate artisan pieces and bejeweled classics, including a diamond-studded panther on a leash by Cartier. “There are some very fine pins,” Globus said.

The curator’s favorite is the eagle Albright wore when she was sworn into office, even though the pin wasn’t exactly cooperative. “The story was that she had bought herself a very special diamond antique eagle (for the ceremony) ... and that she hadn’t clasped it properly,” Globus said. “It was fine for the rehearsal but it was hanging off the pin-back” during the real deal.

'Breaking the Glass Ceiling'
My friend and I decided our favorite was a pin titled “Breaking the Glass Ceiling,” created in 1997. Albright certainly busted through the State Department’s ceiling, securing a path for current Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and for Condoleezza Rice in the George W. Bush administration.

Another eye-catcher is the Liberty Brooch, a silver likeness of the Statute of Liberty’s head. The eye sockets are filled with watch faces, each carefully positioned to show Albright or a facing guest when it’s time to end the appointment. This pin was featured in a previous show, “Brooching It Diplomatically,” in which jewelry artists were invited to create pins for Albright.

So, what’s Albright, now a Georgetown University professor, doing for jewelry while her famed pins are traveling the country? A “pity collection” is under way, Globus said. “Everyone is giving her pins.”

The “Read My Pins” exhibition ends Jan. 31 in New York, but reopens soon afterward in the William J. Clinton Presidential Library & Museum in Little Rock, Ark. The collection will be on display this summer in the Smithsonian Institution’s Information Center in Washington, D.C., and this fall at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Negotiations also are under way for a stop in San Francisco, but there are no plans for Minnesota at this point, Globus said.

Casey Selix can be reached at cselix[at]minnpost[dot]com. Follow her on Twitter.