Earlier this month I attended TED 2008. TED stands for “Technology, Entertainment, Design” but now may be more synonymous with the words inspiration and philanthropy. Those are two good words.

One of my favorite talks was by Thomas Krens director of the Guggenheim Foundation. In his talk he quoted André Malraux as saying,

“Our museums propose a Greece which never existed.”

Krens wished to make the point that many of the pure and plain sculptures we encounter in a museum from early times were actually garishly painted with colors and other details. His comment gave me pause, as it’s one of the few quotes I wrote down that week. I did a Google Books search and found the original quote which is slightly different.

Krens made me wonder not just about museums, but about the value of the present in relation to the past. It would seem, that the value of the past is in how perfectly we preserve it in its honest form — but if the expectation of the masses regarding what its perceived as what the past is “supposed to look like” it really can be quite confusing.

Similarly, I know that our own perception of what a T-rex looks like and behaves has been heavily influenced by what movies have told us about this creature. Yet in the scientific world the debate continues as to whether instead of being Godzilla-like as an uber-reptile, that instead they were more like birds. Godzilla, a bird?

What we see, is not necessarily what has been seen. There is always more than meets the eye. For this reason we leverage the power of history, are aided by the fact-making strength of our museums, and as a society are permitted to ask the questions of the future that are always connected with our past. What did happen? What will happen? What can happen? Great schools help us answer these questions.