She Changed How We See the Animal Kingdom. Now You Can Step Into Her World.

There are exhibitions, and then there are the ones that stay with you. Becoming Jane: The Evolution of Dr. Jane Goodall — now open at South Florida PBS in Boynton Beach — is the second kind. Developed by the National Geographic Society in partnership with the Jane Goodall Institute USA, it opened just over a year after Dr. Goodall’s passing, and it carries the weight of that timing. This is not a retrospective. It’s an invitation into a life.

The centerpiece is an immersive gallery built to resemble Tanzania’s Gombe Stream National Park — the place where Goodall spent decades studying wild chimpanzees and rewrote what we thought we knew about the animal kingdom. Forest imagery, projections, and the actual sounds of Gombe surround you. It’s the kind of room that makes you stop talking.

You can step inside a recreation of Jane’s research tent, explore chimpanzee behavior and communication through interactive stations, and come face-to-face with a lifelike holographic projection of Dr. Goodall herself — sharing stories from her extraordinary life in her own voice. It’s the closest thing to sitting across from her.

The exhibition has earned an American Alliance of Museums Excellence in Exhibition Award and a Thea Award for Outstanding Achievement in Museum Exhibit Design — the kind of recognition that tells you the production quality matches the subject matter.

Becoming Jane is on view exclusively at the Cornelia T. Bailey Cultural Arts Center at South Florida PBS through January 24, 2027. It’s a drive up to Boynton Beach worth making — for families, for anyone who grew up watching National Geographic, and for anyone who needs a reminder that one person’s curiosity can change the world.