King Kong. The Arctic Monkeys. Ape Escape 3. Primates are in, and the Cleveland Museum of Natural History gets into the swing of things with Discovering Chimpanzees: The Remarkable World of Jane Goodall. The 6,000-square foot exhibition takes visitors straight to Tanzania’s Gombe National Park, the heart of Goodall’s monkey business. “When you walk into the African forest, you leave our area completely and enter a very large, very colorful place,” says museum spokeswoman Gail Takacs.

Participants can go ape in four interactive environments: the aforementioned forest, a research tent filled with artifacts and videos from Goodall’s Gombe days, a photo display, and a chimp-walk area, where folks can learn how to properly drag their knuckles. It’s all designed to promote Goodall’s philosophy. “Her message is about the different initiatives and actions to save and protect places like this forest,” says Takacs.

Discovering Chimpanzees also includes hands-on stations where big and little kids can monkey around with displays that teach them chimp facial expressions and vocalizations as well as how to build a nest in a makeshift tree. “We are very much into evolution here,” says Takacs. “Aren’t we all curious about where we came from? Our job here at the museum is filling in those links.”
Mondays-Saturdays, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; Sundays, 12-5 p.m. Starts: June 3. Continues through Sept. 3

This article appears in May 31 – Jun 6, 2006.