FREIGHTED

500 years of rhinoceros collection and display

This travelling exhibition presents the rhinoceros as an object of spectacle, study, currency and desire. It refers to the complex history of colony, power and acquisition in relation to early collections of natural history, and the relevance of this to 21st century collections, as well as the crisis in which many species find themselves today. Starting with Dürer’s 1515 rhinoceros engraving, where he referred to the image as abconderfet, an accurate copy of an absent original, the exhibition draws on a history of printmaking and reproduction, particularly poignant in the current context where the rhinoceros, threatened by extinction, is poised to become a digital image only.  The project points to these lacunae, and, framed by a bisected rhino-sized crate, contains no real specimens but presents the rhinoceros in fragments. It includes images, texts and objects reproductions from museum collections, zoos, and public archives, that draw across time periods and continents. It was exhibited at the Iziko South African Museum between November 2018 and December 2019 and travelled by ship to Lisbon, where it was exhibited at the National Museum of Natural History and Science and then at the National Museum of Natural Sciences, Madrid and the Natural History Museum, Leipzig in 2022. In 2023 it moved to the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Brussels and the University of Antwerp, and in 2024 to the Opel Zoo in Kronberg, Germany and the Prague Zoo. In July 2025 it opened at the Vienna Natural History Museum and will return to South Africa to be on permanent display at the Ditsong National Museum of Natural History, Pretoria in January 2026. The accompanying book, FREIGHTED, a paper cabinet, with contributions from 15 scholars, launched in July 2025.