In 1997, Jock Whitney's widow Betsey Cushing Roosevelt Whitney donated the Venetian Room to the French-American Foundation, which in turn offered to help reinstall the room in its original location. Four layers of floor surfaces, the oldest dating from the 1950s, were removed as part of the restoration, and the physical space containing the room was repaired. Many of the original decorations remained in good condition after half a century; when the decorations were retrieved from a stable at Greentree, one restorer compared it to "opening up King Tut's tomb". The restoration was completed in April 1998. Among the other discoveries in the late 1990s was that of the statue in the rotunda which was authenticated in 1996 as a Michelangelo work. A dress worn by actress Marilyn Monroe was also discovered on the third floor around that time; it is unclear how the dress ended up in the house, since Monroe was not known to have visited the French Embassy.
