Frank Chapman was ahead of his time in his belief that museum displays
    should present animals in the context of their habitats, and insisted that
    dioramas should depict actual places, not idealized composites.

I was thinking along similar lines about how biographies are presented as I read the story. Because of the use of photographs such as that of Beck dressing a bird in his workshop. That picture shows the cramped, dirty, smelly conditions that he worked in. How many images prior to the 20th century do we have that show people dressed-down like that? Depictions of scientists of the past are clean and composed. We don't see Newton sweating over a forge. Or Darwin knee-deep in island mud. But that had to have happened, right?

Photography added a layer of realism that didn't exist before. Perhaps that influenced the museum to create a more true-to-life exhibit.