When Embassy Art Becomes Foreign Policy
The removal of a Kehinde Wiley painting from the U.S. Embassy in Santo Domingo raises a larger question: What should American art displayed abroad be expected to communicate?
Why Was the Kehinde Wiley Painting Removed?
The State Department has removed Young Artists After Siamesas 1960, a monumental Kehinde Wiley painting commissioned for the U.S. Embassy in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
The work depicts four young Dominican artists posed against Wiley’s characteristic elaborate floral background. Installed in 2015, the painting measures more than 12 feet wide and nearly nine feet tall. It occupied a prominent position in the embassy’s main public hall.
Ambassador Leah Campos described the painting as an example of “globalist and woke ideologies.” A senior State Department official subsequently confirmed that the government is investigating whether the painting can legally be sold.
I find the painting beautiful.
I also think there is something culturally important about what Wiley was attempting to do. He traveled to the Dominican Republic, studied its artistic community and placed young Dominican artists into the visual language of monumental portraiture—a tradition historically associated with wealth, status and political power.
There are values embedded in that gesture that can reasonably be described as American values: opportunity, dignity, cultural exchange and the idea that people historically excluded from institutions of power should be able to see themselves represented within them.
Those are also legitimate instruments of diplomacy.
But that does not necessarily mean the painting communicates America strongly enough for one of the country's most important diplomatic spaces.
Art in an Embassy Has a Job to Do
The State Department's Art in Embassies program was formalized during the Kennedy administration. Today, it organizes exhibitions and maintains permanent collections throughout American diplomatic spaces around the world. Its stated purpose is to strengthen international relationships through visual art and creative exchange.
That mission makes embassy art fundamentally different from art hanging in a museum.
A museum can display a painting because it is beautiful, historically important, provocative or culturally significant. An embassy is an official representation of the United States government on foreign soil.
What hangs on its walls therefore communicates something about America.
And a painting can communicate something that words cannot.
That is, after all, part of the reason we make art in the first place.
An embassy can publish a statement describing American values. It can issue a press release about democracy or cultural exchange. But an image operates differently. It creates an immediate impression before anyone explains what it means.
That is where my feelings about Wiley's painting become more complicated.
Beautiful, Important — But what makes it American?
I can look at Young Artists After Siamesas 1960 and appreciate it aesthetically. I can understand its cultural significance. I can understand why the State Department originally considered it an effective work of cultural diplomacy.
But if I encountered the painting without knowing its provenance, I am not sure there is anything within the image itself that would make me think:
America.
For a work occupying a prominent position inside an American embassy, I think there should be.
That does not mean every embassy wall needs a bald eagle, the Statue of Liberty or George Washington.
Nor do I think the answer has to be as narrowly prescribed as the current administration's emphasis on immediately recognizable patriotic imagery.
There is an enormous space between those two approaches.
In fact, Wiley's painting itself provides an interesting example of what might have been possible.
Imagine essentially the same composition—the same young Dominican artists, the same monumental scale, the same dignity and contemporary approach to portraiture—but instead of Wiley's floral background, the figures were surrounded by an abstract interpretation of stars and stripes. Imagine the palette moving toward red, white and blue.
Suddenly the painting could communicate two things simultaneously.
It could say: We see you.
And it could unmistakably say: America.
To me, that might have made the work an even more powerful piece of visual diplomacy.
The subjects would remain Dominican. The artistic voice would remain Wiley's. The message of dignity and cultural exchange would remain intact. But the visual language surrounding them would identify the institution presenting that message.
That is the middle ground I find most compelling.
Patriotism Does Not Have to Be Narrow
The current administration is offering a much more explicit visual definition of America. The embassy's 2026 Art in Embassies listing includes images of Babe Ruth, the Statue of Liberty, baseball memorabilia and Jasper Johns's Tattered Banner.
Those images are immediately recognizable as American, and I understand the impulse behind choosing them.
But I don't think American patriotism has to be limited to a fixed collection of familiar national icons.
America has an extraordinarily rich visual vocabulary.
The flag is part of it. So are its colors, landscapes, architecture, history, industry, technology, military traditions, popular culture, democratic institutions and countless artistic movements. Contemporary artists should be able to interpret those symbols rather than merely reproduce them.
The goal should not be uniformity.
It should be recognition.
An American embassy should be capable of displaying sophisticated contemporary art, celebrating the culture of its host country and participating in genuine cultural exchange while still leaving a visitor with an unmistakable sense of the country doing the communicating.
That balance becomes especially important now.
Patriotism Is Also a Form of Diplomacy
The United States is operating in an international environment in which countries are increasingly deliberate about projecting national identity, strength, technological capacity and cultural confidence.
China understands the importance of visual symbolism. Russia understands it. Nations routinely use architecture, ceremony, military displays, monuments, sporting events, clothing and art to communicate who they are and what they believe themselves capable of doing.
America should understand it too.
But America's answer does not have to imitate anyone else's.
Our visual diplomacy can be confident without being rigid and patriotic without becoming culturally insular.
In fact, successful diplomacy often depends upon precisely that balance:
This is who we are. We are interested in who you are. And here is where our values meet.
That is what I would like American embassy art to accomplish.
Who Gets to Represent America?
This is why I don't think the most interesting question surrounding the Wiley painting is whether it is "woke" or "globalist."
Those labels end the conversation precisely where the interesting part begins.
The more important question is what America wants its official spaces abroad to say.
Wiley's painting presents an appealing vision of cultural exchange. Dominican subjects are given monumental scale and visual dignity by a prominent American artist, inside an American diplomatic institution. There is meaning in that gesture.
What I find missing is not patriotism in the political sense.
It is visual identification.
I want to be able to look at the art inside an American embassy and recognize something of America within it.
Not necessarily the America of Babe Ruth.
Not necessarily the America of any particular administration.
But America nonetheless.
That leaves room for artists such as Wiley to challenge, reinterpret and expand what American imagery can look like. In fact, I think that would make the country's cultural diplomacy more interesting rather than less.
Perhaps the strongest embassy art would accomplish exactly what Wiley was attempting while adding one additional layer: a visual conversation between the United States and the country hosting it.
A Dominican subject against American stars and stripes would not erase Dominican identity.
It would place the two identities in conversation.
And isn't that ultimately what an embassy is supposed to do?
I can therefore believe that Young Artists After Siamesas 1960 is beautiful, culturally significant and representative of values that have a legitimate place within American diplomacy while still believing that it does not visually communicate America strongly enough for the space it occupies.
A painting is capable of saying something words cannot.
Which is precisely why we should pay attention to what our paintings are saying.
Author’s Disclosure: This article was developed with the assistance of AI as a research, editorial, organizational and critical-analysis tool. The author developed the central argument—including her interpretation of the Wiley painting and her position on the role of recognizable American imagery in diplomatic spaces—and used AI to explore competing interpretations, organize the analysis and assist with drafting and refinement. The opinions, judgments and conclusions expressed here are the author’s own, and the author retains responsibility for the finished work.