A Museum for All: Dennos Museum Center

As federal decisions limit funding for the arts, the Dennos remains committed to its community

By Ren Brabenec | July 26, 2025

“The Dennos Museum Center builds community, sparks conversation, and inspires change for audiences of all ages through its exhibitions, programs, and the collection and preservation of art,” reads the mission statement of a Traverse City staple that’s stood at the southwest end of Northwestern Michigan College’s campus since 1991.

“Dennos is one of the top two or three out of over 400 community college museums in the United States in terms of size, outreach, programming, and sheer inventory,” says Executive Director and Chief Curator Craig Hadley. “To have a museum of this size and scale here in our little town is a real treasure. From the world-class Inuit collection to the children’s gallery, there are exhibits and activities here that you just don’t get elsewhere. It’s truly a museum for all.”

For those who haven’t visited the museum in a year or two, a return visit might feel like a first-time experience. The museum’s Discovery Gallery has been completely revamped since last year, featuring an updated digital interactive called Quantum Space. The museum is also working on a comprehensive rebranding, slated for completion next year to coincide with the museum’s 35th anniversary and NMC’s 75th anniversary.

Hadley sat down with us to discuss the happenings at the museum, including challenges, aspirations, setbacks, and how, through it all, the Dennos Museum Center remains committed to its mission.

Weathering the Storm

In the publicly funded arts, it’s the responsibility of a museum’s executive director to determine what funding the museum needs to continue its operations and to submit grant applications to secure funding for those projects. To Hadley, who’s worked in museum curation for almost 20 years, this is just a part of the job.

Only this year, that job has looked very, very different.

“Do you know what ‘grant clawback’ is?” Hadley asks. “So, we determine what the museum needs, and we write/submit grant requests in December. Those grants are approved the following September, usually. However, the grants work on a reimbursement basis. We get approval for the grant, then we spend our money on the projects we pitched, then the grant reimburses us.”

Hadley took us through the museum’s 2023, 2024, and 2025 timelines, laying out how the Trump administration in April of this year issued executive orders and “grant clawback” decisions that effectively nullified the previous year’s grant approvals. At the same time, the White House issued messaging that most future grant applications would be declined on the spot.

“Grants help us improve our collections, caretake our exhibits, update our facilities, and do our jobs of preserving and presenting the arts,” Hadley says. “Unfortunately, just when we were doing our fiscal reporting earlier this year, we got a letter from the federal government saying our grants approved under the previous administration would not be disbursed, so we had to scramble to make up the funding shortfall, as that money we’d been promised was already spent.”

Thankfully, the community was more than willing to help. After the Dennos issued a call for aid, private donations and philanthropic support for the museum in 2025 has thus far surpassed any other year since Hadley took the job in 2019.

“Seeing that level of community support was heartwarming,” Hadley says. “But with grant applications now being shot down on sight and en masse, the future is pretty uncertain, at least for the next 3.5 years.”

Fall Exhibits

On a brighter note, Hadley is excited to tell us about upcoming fall exhibits at the Dennos.

“We have three new exhibits opening this fall,” he says, indicating the exhibits would likely be kicked off with a special opening reception in the week of Sept. 15-21 but that an exact date hadn’t been announced just yet.

Arctic Ice: The first exhibit will be a beautiful collaborative exhibition of the work of artists, landscape researchers, climatologists, and scientists. The exhibit will feature Arctic sea ice portraitures and drawings in a way that integrates field data, remote satellite imagery, scientific analysis, and multimedia visual representation to document Arctic ice that is rapidly disappearing due to climate change.

Dewey Blocksma: The artwork of folk artist and retired emergency room doctor Dewey Blocksma will return to the Dennos, this time featuring a new array of sculptures and artistic creations crafted entirely from “trash” objects Blocksma finds discarded throughout the world.

Freshwater Studies Exhibit: In collaboration with NMC, the Dennos will present an exhibit that takes viewers underwater, combining the work of the Great Lakes Water Studies Institute with art to create a unique experience that awes, inspires, informs, and compels.

“The theme for this fall is water, resources, reuse, and recycling,” Hadley says.

AAM Accreditation

Our sister paper, The Ticker, checked in with Hadley one year ago to get an update on the museum’s journey toward national accreditation with the American Alliance of Museums (AAM). Hadley had listed AAM accreditation as a goal of his when he joined the Dennos, as the AAM badge of honor indicates adherence to museum best practices, highlights significant public trust, and invites greater funding opportunities while encouraging the development of more exhibits.

“Only 4 percent of some 33,000 museums in the U.S. get the accreditation, and it’s a long process,” Hadley says. “But we’re making good progress. We aim to apply for accreditation in the fall of 2026, as there are some major projects we want to complete first.”

Hadley describes the accreditation process as involving a series of remote and in-person interviews, professional reviewers from the AAM visiting the museum in person to inspect it, a required internal self-study, and a host of other review, reporting, and analysis steps.

Although the funding shortfalls mentioned earlier have slowed Hadley and his team in their efforts to tackle the “punch list” of tasks they want to accomplish before submitting their application, Hadley remains confident that they can complete their tasks and aim for accreditation within a little more than a year.

“We spent five years writing grants and securing funding to receive and implement museum-quality equipment, shelving, boxes, storage, and presentation material,” he says. “We’re currently 60-70 percent done with our last, big task: inventorying our 3,000+ pieces so everything is fully cataloged, photographed, and recorded.”

At the Museum Now

To see what is on exhibit at the Dennos, visit dennosmuseum.org/art/now-on-view. You can also see their full calendar of activities, community offerings, films, and concerts at dennosmuseum.org/events. Here are a few summer events you won’t want to miss:

Second Sunday Art Project. From June 8 through August 10, the Dennos will host a participatory artistic experience, with each session offering a unique and creative activity supported by the Linda O’Meara Fund for Arts Education.

Ikebana Pop-Up Exhibit and Event. On the weekend of August 9-10, the Dennos offers an Ikebana Pop-Up Exhibit featuring Ikebana Flower Arranging classes for children.

The Art of David Barr. On August 14, EMU Professor Emeritus Ken Stevens will take attendees on a journey through the visionary artwork of Michigan artist David Barr.

Drop In & Draw. On August 21, Plein Air Painters of Northern Michigan will host an afternoon of observation and creativity at the Dennos, themed on artists interpreting the museum’s collection.