Ghosts Behind Glass - by Dolly Jørgensen (Paperback)

About the Book

"Ghosts behind Glass is a moving exploration of displays of extinct animals in museums around the world. Dolly J²rgensen, a historian of the environment and technology, traveled to over seventy museums to walk their displays of extinct life, and she brings her expertise to this short, illustrated book of reflections. What do museum displays reveal about how we think and communicate about extinction? In a way that is, perhaps miraculously, both deeply sad and hopeful, J²rgensen thematically explores her encounters with what she calls the "ghosts behind glass." It would be easy to associate the contemporary extinction crisis with disappearance-after all, animal populations are rapidly disappearing-but this book instead turns our gaze to the ongoing presence of the extinct. Using a mix of historical storytelling and first-hand description, the chapters respectfully animate the remains of the extinct"--

Book Synopsis

How museums display extinct species--and what these exhibits say about us.

While it's 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 species--whether taxidermied, skeletal, drawn, or sculpted--stare back at us from display cases.

In this moving meditation on what's lost and what endures, environmental historian Dolly Jørgensen visits natural history collections worldwide--from Shanghai to Philadelphia, from Edinburgh to Hobart, Australia--to 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 afterlives--passenger pigeons, giant moas, thylacines--as well as those that are less likely to be discussed or displayed. Throughout, Jørgensen 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 humanity's environmental impact, Ghosts Behind Glass asks what we can learn about our world from the presence of the extinct.

Review Quotes

"A timely exploration of lost animals all over the world in the era of the sixth Mass Extinction. This is a book for anyone who loves museums and their sacred spaces."--Libby Robin, author of "What Birdo is That?: A Field Guide to Bird-people"

"Part travelogue, part academic analysis, Ghosts Behind Glass draws readers in by narrating a well-known truth about natural history displays--how they both vary and stay the same across time and space--and provides museum visitors and practitioners alike with fresh perspectives on it. Jørgensen frames extinction and its uncertain history thematically, focusing on vignettes of different animal specimens, exhibits, skeletons, and models from over seventy institutions worldwide. Her own museum encounters unfold into ghost stories about human-animal engagements that are both compelling and (she readily admits) hard to pin down. Whether or not you believe any museum's extinct animals become ghosts that have the power to speak for themselves, Jorgensen's voice will affectively draw you in and leave you reflecting on some big and contradictory themes, including the presence of absence and the coexistence of memorialization and lively relations with the extinct dead. Well-informed but not constrained by scholarship in fields ranging from history of science, animal studies, art history, and museology, Ghosts Behind Glass promotes a sense of curiosity and wonder about natural history museums and further clarifies their ongoing role in 're-presenting' nature across many animal and human generations."--Karen Rader, coauthor of "Life on Display: Revolutionizing U.S. Museums of Science and Natural History in the Twentieth Century"

About the Author

Dolly Jørgensen is professor of history at the University of Stavanger and coeditor in chief of the journal Environmental Humanities. She is the author of Recovering Lost Species in the Modern Age: Histories of Longing and Belonging and The Medieval Pig and the coeditor of several volumes, including Sharing Spaces: Technology, Mediation, and Human-Animal Relationships. In 2025 she won the Gad Rausing Prize for Outstanding Humanities Research, awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History, and Antiquities.