The U.S. Department of State unveiled the official portrait of former secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton last week, a decade after she resigned from the position. 

The portrait depicts Clinton standing in front of an American flag. It was painted by Steven Polson, who also painted General Colin Powell, Madeleine Albright, and Condoleezza Rice for the Department of State.

Hillary Clinton vacated her Senate seat in 2009 to serve President Obama as the 67th secretary of state. She resigned in 2013 amid the fallout from the Benghazi attacks, declining health, and an unremarkable record of diplomatic achievements. John Kerry succeeded Clinton. 

“Secretary Clinton led the push to strategically rethink where, with whom, and how America engages, especially in the Indo-Pacific, where she rightly recognizes the region that would determine the trajectory of the 21st century,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said at the ceremony on Tuesday, September 26.

Blinken also spoke highly of Clinton’s advancement of social issues. 

“She was the first secretary of state to declare and uphold an inalienable truth: gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights,” he said. “A lot of what’s now recognized as universal, what’s commonly accepted, Secretary Clinton helped make it that way.”

Clinton said her leadership involved “taking a longer-term view about where we wanted to be, what kind of world we wanted to create for our children and our grandchildren.” 

“So we built global coalitions to curb nuclear proliferation, to tackle climate change, to promote democracy,” Clinton said. “We continued to build on our human rights commitments — women’s rights, gay rights, the rights of all people to have a chance to live up to their own God-given potential.”

Blinken commended Clinton for her stance on Putin, saying, “She led with both America’s values and our interests in calling out Putin for who he really is — from the start,” which garnered applause from the audience.

“[W]e have seen the continuation of a lot of the values and priorities that we worked on into the Biden administration,” Clinton said. “And in looking across the globe, defending democracy in Ukraine, expanding NATO — just an as aside; too bad, Vladimir. You brought it on yourself.”

Clinton now chairs the Institute of Global Politics at Columbia University and co-teaches the “Inside the Situation Room” course at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs.