The creation of exhibition entitled 466/64 – A Prisoner in the Garden was the first step in the long and exciting process of recovering and exhibiting Mandela’s prison archive. The exhibition showed hitherto unseen photographs and documents related to Mandela’s twenty-seven years of imprisonment.

The exhibition was carefully designed to give visitors a sense of incarceration while at the same time, celebrating the opening of the archival record to the public. The exhibition floor was slightly lifted off the reception floor of the Nelson Mandela Foundation by a steel box frame that was filled with white stones. These stones are reminiscent of the blinding whiteness of the lime quarry where the political prisoners worked for years. The exhibition structure was made to resemble a steel mesh cage as an obvious references to incarceration. Original archival crates as well as steel cabinets with drawers store and allow for an interactive display of the prisoner correspondence, letters and documents from the prison archive. These documents were carefully researched and selected to provide a new and intimate portrait of Mandela and his fellow comrades during their long twenty-seven year stay in prison.

The exhibition is currently permanently housed in the Old Fort at Constitution Hill. Penguin has published a book on the exhibition and the prison archive that is being sold worldwide.