Origins Centre Museum

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Origins Centre Museum A museum that explores the origins of art and humanity in Africa,
San heritage, and rock art. Africa is where our ancestors evolved.

It’s only fitting then that the bustling metropolis of Johannesburg, South Africa, is home to the Origins Centre. Ceremoniously opened by former president Thabo Mbeki in 2006, the Origins Centre is a world-class museum dedicated to the exploration and celebration of humankind, telling the story of the emergence of human beings and humanity in southern Africa. Conceptualised by a team of academics and designers from Wits University, the museum aims to provide visitors with a unique experience of Africa’s rich and complex heritage. The Origins Centre houses an extensive collection of southern African rock art in collaboration with Wits University's Rock Art Research Institute (RARI). Visitors are thus afforded the fantastic opportunity to learn about the earliest images made by humans, and witness southern African rock art - recognized by many as comprising some of the most beautiful and complex rock art in the world. Combining cutting-edge technology with the creative vision of some of South Africa’s foremost artists, exhibits take visitors on an extraordinary voyage of discovery, which begins with the origins of humankind in Africa, and progresses through the history, symbolism, and technology associated with the various traditions of southern African rock art. The permanent museum exhibit begins with the oldest aspects of the human past. A favourite of this part of the journey features casts of hominid fossils discovered in South Africa and focuses on the contribution that these fossils have made to understanding the development of humankind. The exploration then continues, showing how the diverse southern African rock art traditions – the world’s oldest continuous art forms – have been treated differently at various points in history, contrasting colonial ideas with with the re-discovery of these ancient masterworks in a contemporary world. The average museum experience takes between 90 minutes and two hours, but for the enthusiast, there is an unsurpassed wealth of additional multi-media material detailing Africa’s past. To book your tour of the centre contact our front desk on +27 (0)11 717 4700, or email: [email protected]

To subscribe to our mailing list and receive updates on events at the Origins Centre, email: [email protected]

If you would like to contact the Rock Art Research Institute at Wits details can be found at https://www.wits.ac.za/rockart/

Lots of fun this morning at the Origins Club! 🌞✨️👭👫🤾‍♂️Wits University 📷 by Goeun
17/10/2026

Lots of fun this morning at the Origins Club! 🌞✨️👭👫🤾‍♂️

Wits University

📷 by Goeun

17/10/2026

Last chance to see these two thought-provoking, sensory and visually intriguing exhibitions, which have run alongside each other at Origins Centre.

After Panic
&
The Hazel Futa Project: The Soil Remembers

Last Day: 17 October 2026 (09:00 - 15:00)
Wits Origins Centre

After Panic by Ruth Sacks explores the physical aftermath of disaster—focusing on the matter that lingers long after the spectacle has ended and the news cycle has moved on. The work probes the ongoing realities of environmental racism on the peripheries of the African city, examining hazards ranging from toxic mine slurry to the encasement of a looted African icon. 

'The Hazel Futa Project: The Soil Remembers'
revisits the legacy of Hazel Futa, Miss South Africa 1955. Using material inoculated with microbial samples taken from the soil of Hazel Futa’s remembered footsteps, the exhibit has become a living site of continuous growth, demonstrating that forgotten stories, like energy, simply change form rather than end. 

Khaya Mchunu Thato Radebe
Ruth Sacks 
UJ FADA
Wits University

This week we went to Maropeng to run two ochre workshops. So much fun!✨️🤗✨️🎨🖌 📷 by Arya Tammy Hodgskiss Reynard and ...
16/10/2026

This week we went to Maropeng to run two ochre workshops. So much fun!✨️🤗✨️🎨🖌



📷 by Arya Tammy Hodgskiss Reynard and Goeun

After PanicBy Ruth SacksCurrently showing at Origins Centre, Wits UniversityThe exhibition explores the physical afterma...
08/10/2026

After Panic
By Ruth Sacks

Currently showing at Origins Centre, Wits University

The exhibition explores the physical aftermath of disaster—focusing on the matter that lingers long after the spectacle has ended and the news cycle has moved on.

Sacks’ body of work probes the ongoing realities of environmental racism on the peripheries of the African city, examining hazards ranging from toxic mine slurry to the encasement of a looted African icon.

Curated by Vaughn Sadie

Exhibition on until 17 October 2026

Ruth Sacks

Guns & Rain
UJ Arts & Culture
Wits University

Our second Origins Club session is coming up! ✨👫👭😁Saturday 17 October from 10:00 until 12:00Children will explore Ruth S...
07/10/2026

Our second Origins Club session is coming up! ✨👫👭😁

Saturday 17 October from 10:00 until 12:00

Children will explore Ruth Sacks’s exhibition, After Panic, and respond to the artworks through a sensory clay activity. They will also become young archaeologists as they dig for simulated fossils, stone tools and artefacts.

Join us for a playful session of art, discovery and hands-on learning!

Supported by NIHSS

Origins Centre is excited to be a part of Fak'ugesi 2026: African Imaginaries. Origins joins the 'Memory Engines' freque...
06/10/2026

Origins Centre is excited to be a part of Fak'ugesi 2026: African Imaginaries.

Origins joins the 'Memory Engines' frequency.
We invite you to join us on Wednesday 14th October for an immersive experience where past meets future.
Where, while immersed in the narratives of our human histories, innovators and artists explore how Africa creates, preserves and transmits knowledge on our own terms.

It's going to be epic!
Get your tickets https://fakugesi.co.za/tickets.html

The Fak’ugesi African Digital & Innovation Festival returns from 13 to 17 October 2026 under the theme African Imaginaries.

EXHIBITION OPENING📍 SAT 3 OCT | 11:00Origins Centre, WitsPLANETARY COGNITIVE ECOLOGIES GondwanaA new solo exhibition by ...
30/09/2026

EXHIBITION OPENING

📍 SAT 3 OCT | 11:00
Origins Centre, Wits

PLANETARY COGNITIVE ECOLOGIES

Gondwana

A new solo exhibition by Henrietta Scholtz, UJ Artist in Residence '26.

Built from ghost data: ancestral proteins inferred from living enzymes, tracing back to Gondwana's extinct forests. Across projection, VR, sound and painting, deep time meets the coal it left behind.

Part of the Fak'ugesi African Digital Innovation Festival.

On show 3 Oct to 14 Nov. All welcome, please bring ID for campus access.

—

Pictured: Where The Atoms Might Be (2026). Fusion protein construct, ancestral sequence reconstruction, Benchling, structure prediction, South African Permian coal pigment texture map.



Please join Professor Nithaya Chetty for his State of the Faculty of Science addressFriday 2 October 202613:15-14:15Orig...
30/09/2026

Please join Professor Nithaya Chetty for his State of the Faculty of Science address

Friday 2 October 2026
13:15-14:15
Origins Centre

Wits - University of the Witwatersrand

Yesterday we had the opening of Doors of Learning: Microcosms of a Future South Africa, followed by a very interesting p...
30/09/2026

Yesterday we had the opening of Doors of Learning: Microcosms of a Future South Africa, followed by a very interesting panel discussion with architects Spencer Hodgson, Linda Mvusi and Jabu Makhubu.

The exhibition explores two radical experiments in education, communal living, architecture and international solidarity by the South African liberation movement in exile: the Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College and the Dakawa Development Centre in Tanzania. Through architecture, design and personal histories, the exhibition examines how space became integral to imagining and building a democratic future.

The exhibition is open until 27 November.


Rosa Luxemburg Foundation
Wits University

Address

Corner Yale Road & Enoch Sontonga Drive, University Of The Witwatersrand, Braamfontein
Johannesburg
2001

Opening Hours

Monday 09:00 - 17:00
Tuesday 09:00 - 17:00
Wednesday 09:00 - 17:00
Thursday 09:00 - 17:00
Friday 09:00 - 17:00
Saturday 09:00 - 16:00

Telephone

+27(0) 11 717 4700

Website

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