Ghosts Behind Glass

“Thought-provoking … This meticulous unpacking of curatorial choices conveys the complexity of telling the extinction story even as the number of extinct species rapidly balloons.” * Publishers Weekly *“Ghosts Behind Glass is a rich academic text. It finds, proportional to the care and delicacy of Jørgensen’s attention (and as good scholarship tends to), observations that feel unbounded by discipline or subject. It is also a pleasure to read. I found myself, in Jørgensen’s text, more excited inside the natural history museum than I had been in years. I finished the book in New York, and the next day I took myself to the American Museum of Natural History to hunt for ghosts.” * Newcity *

“A marvelous and moving book.”

* The Revelator *“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”“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”