Co-MammalHub: An Interactive Evening about Rhinos and Pangolins

What would a world without rhinos and pangolins look like? What does it mean when a rhino is worth more dead than alive? What should the world know about pangolins? And where do the rhinos and pangolins in the museum come from?

These are the questions addressed by Co-MammalHub, an international event series. Through lectures, insights into museum collections, and art-led workshops, the programme invites dialogue and creative engagement with the challenges facing endangered mammals. Following two iterations in Pretoria and Nairobi, the project now comes to Berlin.

The event will feature contributions from workshop participants from South Africa and Kenya who have been engaged in particular with issues relating to wildlife conservation and poaching. At Co-MammalHub at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, we will focus on the history of research and acquisition of rhinoceros and pangolin specimens, as well as the museum’s engagement with its colonial past.

An evening event (in German and English (without simultaneous interpretation)) in three parts:

• Opening with introductory talks in the event hall
• Discussions and tour of the newly designed hall housing the research collection of mammalian skulls
• Exchange and project presentation in the taxidermy exhibition. Parallelly, an artistic workshop with Nicola Grobler will take place in the education rooms (participation is limited and requires registration. In English)

Contributions from the workshop will be incorporated into the redesign of the mammal exhibition at the Ditsong National Museum of Natural History, Pretoria.

An interactive evening featuring:

Dr Annie Antonites, Ditsong National Museum of Natural History, Pretoria 

Dr Nicola Grobler, University of Pretoria, South Africa

Lydia Nafula, Nairobi National Museum, Kenya

Brandon Kilbourne Ph.D., Poet and Evolutionary Biologist

Anita Hermannstädter, Centre for Humanities of Nature, Museum für Naturkunde

Prof. Michael Ohl, Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Discovery, Museum für Naturkunde

Dr Katja Kaiser, Centre for Humanities of Nature, Museum für Naturkunde

Dr Frieder Mayer, Head of the Mammal Collection, Museum für Naturkunde

Linda Gallé, Head of the Exhibition Working Group, Museum für Naturkunde

Further Information:

More about the Co-MammalHub project

More about the events in Pretoria and Nairobi

More about the initiative by TheMuseumsLab CollabFund

The project is an initiative of TheMuseumsLab CollabFund. Funded by the Federal Cultural Foundation. Supported by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.