Expanding and Updating Exhibits at the Olduvai Museum

Design, production, and installation of new exhibits for the Olduvai Gorge Museum started in 1997, culminating in the museum’s official reopening in October 1998, attended by the vice president of Tanzania, Omar Ali Juma. The museum's three rooms offer an orientation to the region and displays on Olduvai Gorge and Laetoli. The Olduvai exhibit was an expanded version with updates to the original exhibition done by the Leakeys. The Laetoli exhibit was entirely new and included a cast of the trackway and numerous didactic panels that tell the story of its conservation. Presented in Swahili and English, the exhibits pay tribute to the sixty years of work by Louis and Mary Leakey at Olduvai Gorge and Laetoli.

Mary Leakey created the original museum at Olduvai in 1970 to provide visitors with information on the significant anthropological discoveries made at Olduvai Gorge. An exhibit was later added on the site of Laetoli, about 25 kilometers south of the gorge. The museum is visited by most of the 100,000 annual visitors to the Ngorongoro Crater and Serengeti National Park as well as by school groups from the region.