And sometimes, we need to learn about them all over again, because each new generation approaches them with new questions. Our role is not just to store, or even to display. It is to identify and explain and make connections. It is to impose order on collections and to find order in the natural world. And in the course of doing all that, our role is to stir the curiosity that asks for better explanations, more persuasive connections and more cogent schemes of order.
Research grounds the authority of the largest display and the integrity of the smallest label.
And the more I talk to researchers at the Smithsonian, the more obvious it becomes that we do research simply because human beings are fundamentally curious. They want explanations. They want to know about themselves, about others, about the world they can see and about worlds they cannot see, and they want to know all the particulars. So we do research because it is the human thing to do. And the process of research becomes more fully human when the knowledge is shared and is made a contribution to the common store of knowledge.