Education: Past, Present and Future, Mosaic at Ministry of Education, Chile

Education: Past, Present and Future is a ceramic tile and acrylic paint mural at the Ministry of Education headquarters in Chile. The artwork spans approximately 45 meters (150 feet) in width and just under 2 meters (6.5 feet) in height, making it a large-scale installation on the building's wall.

Marco Hernández, a teacher at the University of Concepción's architecture faculty, painted the mural in 2009; it was inaugurated on the afternoon of 4 December 2009 for the anniversary of the Regional Ministerial Secretariat of Education (SEREMI) of Biobío. The ceremony took place in the newly created Salón Pablo Neruda, where Hernández thanked the university and dean Ricardo Utz for the agreement between the university and the government body that made the project possible.

The mural reads chronologically from left to right, from pre-Columbian America to the future. The exterior mosaic shows Mapuche teaching methods and materials, ending in an open book that the artist calls the transition to the present. Inside, acrylic panels add a schoolchild, two university students, the Campanil of the University of Concepción and a binary-code sequence.

The mural is permanently displayed on the exterior of the ministry building and is visible from the street, so you can view it without needing entry permission. Since it is an outdoor installation, it is best seen in daylight and can be visited at any time of day.

The outdoor mosaic ends with an open book that Marco Hernández described as the transition to the "present", the symbol of the change education underwent. The indoor acrylic section, on a raised stretch of wall, shows a large eye and a matrix forming a fetus, which the artist reads as an uncertain, abstract future.