Ghosts Behind Glass

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 displaye