Related to Karen Rader, 'Interacting with The Watchful Grasshopper; or, Why Live Animals Matter in Twentieth-Century Science Museums', in Thorsen et. al., Animals on Display (2013), pp. 176-191.
Description:

Rader notes that 'between 1920 and 1950, New York's American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) mounted displays that (in retrospect) epitomize two broad categories of "state of the art" exhibits with live animals by the middle of the twentieth century. First, in the 1920s, AMNH entomologist Frank Lutz envisioned introducing live animals into natural history museum displays as a corrective to boring dioramas... he put bowls of water with live aquatic insects and plants into exhibition cases. Encouraged by visitors' responses, Lutz next exhibited a wire cage of "trim, up-on-their-toes cockroaches," on which, he recalled, "even New Yorkers stopped to gaze."...

The displays of AMNH herpetologist Gladwyn Kingsley Noble, and early animal behaviour scientist, continued this trend but toward slightly different ends. Noble displayed his research animals - including snakes, chameleons, and rats - which were collected from the wild and then bred in the museum for his Laboratory of Experimental Biology... live animals were displayed alongside devices designed to insure a dynamic presentation of key biological concepts.' (177-178)

Related to A. Dodd et. al., 'Introduction', in L.E. Thorsen, et. al. (eds), Animals on Display: the Creaturely in Museums, Zoos, and Natural History. 2013. pp. 1-11.
Description:

Dodd et. al. use the Museum to frame their introduction to the themes of the book. Specifically, they highlight one exhibition, it's "Hall of Biodiversity":

'Visitors... are immediately presented with a 100-foot-long wall containing over a thousand objects, most of which are animal specimens and models... but what, exactly, do these visitors see?' (1)

They note that the intention of the display was to combine 'emotion and education', seducing the audience into questioning humanity's relation to nature. 'But', the authors ask, 'can this kind of looking at animals - in museum diaramas, zoo displays, and film or television programs - ever be taken at face value?... What does it mean to say humans see anything about animals on display?' (1)