The Olympic Games had their beginnings 3,000 years ago, on the Peloponnese island in Ancient Greece. Starting around 776 B.C., the islanders held sports contests at Olympia, a sanctuary which held a monumental statue of Zeus. The games took place every four years, then stopped when the empire fell. In the 1890s, a French educator and historian named Pierre de Coubertin set out to revive the Olympic Games. The name appealed, and a Sorbonne congress resolved to hold the first modern iteration of the games in 1896—in Athens. This exhibition is all about that re-launch: the who, how, and why. —Elena Clavarino