Ghosts Behind Glass

How museums display extinct speciesand what these exhibits say about us. While its no longer possible to encounter a dodo in the wild, we can still come face-to-face with them in museums. The remains of extinct specieswhether taxidermied, skeletal, drawn, or sculptedstare back at us from display cases. In this moving meditation on whats lost and what endures, environmental historian Dolly Jrgensen visits natural history collections worldwidefrom Shanghai to Philadelphia, from Edinburgh to Hobart, Australiato understand the many ways that museums tell stories about extinction. She encounters extinct animals that are framed as cultural artifacts and as rare valuables, that are memorialized with lists, and that are brought to life through augmented reality. She draws our attention to creatures with prominent afterlivespassenger pigeons, giant moas, thylacinesas well as those that are less likely to be discussed or displayed. Throughout, Jrgensen examines the relationship between museums and the natural world, so readers can look more closely at exhibits about extinction, studying the displays for what is there, as well as what is missing. During a period of rapid species loss driven by humanitys environmental impact, Ghosts Behind Glass asks what we can learn about our world from the presence of the extinct.