A new museum exhibit featuring jewelry worn by former U.S. Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, offers insight into the mind and moods of the famous diplomat.

They are delicate, ornate, and beautiful and they come with a message from Madeleine Albright, former U.S. Secretary of State and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

More than 200 brooches from Albright's personal jewelry collection are now on display at Manhattan's Museum of Arts and Design.

According to the museum, it is the first major museum exhibition of Madame Secretary's personal jewelry.

The exhibit is called "Read My Pins: The Madeleine Albright Collection," and it is filled with colorful pins worn by Albright before, during, and after her years in public service.

David Revere McFadden, chief curator of the Museum of Arts and Design, said, "Pins that she wore over her diplomatic career and they were all chosen for this exhibition to reveal the way in which Secretary Albright used pins as a communication device to send messages to people, to give clues as to what she was thinking, what she was doing, what she hoped the outcome might be for some of her negotiations."

Sometimes understated, sometimes outlandish, Albright's use of her jewelry could be the ultimate expression of quiet diplomacy.

According to exhibit organizers, Albright often used a snail or a crab to show impatience with the pace of a discussion. They say spiders are known for their patience as well as their predatory nature, and dragonflies are associated with courage and strength. Albright is said to have worn the dragonfly when she wanted to keep her adversaries guessing as to what she was thinking.

Albright's pins feature an assortment of dragonflies, butterflies, spiders, flowers and other objects and most are inexpensive and made by anonymous designers.

Albright's use of her jewelry as means of expression was born out of a conflict with Iraq's Saddam Hussein in the mid-1990s.

Despite the serious nature of how the pin collection began, McFadden adds that the jewelry is not all serious.

The Read My Pins exhibit will be on display at the Museum of Arts and Design until the end of January 2010.