Bringing the Past to Life: Nonprofit Aims to Launch Regional History Center

While northern Michigan has numerous history museums and historical societies, a local nonprofit hopes to bring the region’s past to life in a brand-new way.

Rather than collecting and displaying artifacts, the Traverse Regional History Center (TRHC) hopes to establish a digital-first facility featuring videos, oral storytelling, interactive exhibits, and lifelike avatars to creatively engage visitors with local history. With the past prominently on people’s minds in America’s 250th anniversary year, the group is seizing the moment to engage supporters and find a location for the center.

Board members George Cochran, Bruce Wiegand, and Beth Stoner Wiegand sat down with The Ticker to discuss the TRHC project. The group of history enthusiasts, some of whom were involved in the previous Traverse City History Center before it closed in the Carnegie Building on Sixth Street, have been meeting since 2016 with the vision of launching a new type of educational facility.

“While there are a dozen or so small history museums and societies in the five-county area, this group saw a vital need to embrace the entire region and tell the fascinating stories of its inhabitants through the eyes of the pioneers and civic founders,” the TRHC website states.

The group’s goal is two-fold, Bruce Wiegand says: to support the work of existing historical organizations throughout the region (specifically Grand Traverse, Benzie, Leelanau, Antrim, and Kalkaska counties) and launch a regional history facility that will be “welcoming,” “accessible,” “digital-first,” and “non-collecting,” he says.

The emphasis on non-collecting means not having to manage, display, and preserve artifacts that can be costly to both acquire and maintain. The City of Traverse City, for example, has long struggled to get its arms around its historic Con Foster collection, which is in storage in the Carnegie Building. An “artifact in a glass case” isn’t interactive and can’t tell the full story of history, Cochran says.

“We’re not trying to diss artifacts; artifacts are cool,” he says. But one of the key things that will differentiate TRHC is the group’s “focus on telling stories,” Cochran says. The group envisions using a mix of live and pre-recorded presentations, interviews, museum theater, and display rooms with sophisticated technology that allows visitors to call up interactive exhibits on a variety of topics. Noting that art museums are also moving in this direction – as with immersive Van Gogh exhibits that surround visitors with projected artwork – Wiegand smiles as he compares the setup to the holodeck on “Star Trek.”

“It’s an empty room, you walk in, and you’re surrounded by a projector with light and sound,” he says. Guests “choose a subject” and are then immersed in a storytelling experience, he continues. In a post-pandemic era when many museums are struggling, providing kinetic, digital experiences can help engage different generations of visitors and allow for constantly updated exhibits, Wiegand says.

TRHC is exploring a partnership with a company that brings historical avatars to life, using AI that allows visitors to interact with figures like Thomas Edison and ask them questions. Such technology could be used to create an interactive avatar of Traverse City founding father Perry Hannah, for instance. Similar avatars could share the history of homesteading farming families, or the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, or key business leaders like Morgan Bates. “It’s really lifelike...and very engaging,” Wiegand says.

TRHC already has a robust website and has begun compiling videos, photo galleries, books, oral histories, and resources – including a guide to other local history museums and organizations. The nonprofit is also working on a video project called “Everything You Don’t Know About Cherries” that will cover some of the history of the region’s key fruit export – a timely topic for the 100th anniversary of the National Cherry Festival. That video will be available on the TRHC website when complete, but the nonprofit is also looking at local screenings along with other live community events in the near future.

AS TRHC’s work expands and the group seeks to engage more community support, it’s also focusing on another target: finding a physical home. The group has looked at locations for the center ranging from The Village at Grand Traverse Commons to the former Traverse Bay United Methodist Church on Ramsdell, but so far hasn’t found the right spot. The nonprofit is ideally seeking to buy, not have a landlord – part of the reason TRHC didn’t respond to recent city requests-for-proposals for the Bijou and Carnegie buildings – and be on a centrally located property that could accommodate up to a 20,000-square-foot facility. A long-term lease, like in the 50-year-plus range, is another option.

Cochran says he’s confident something will materialize. “Right now, we want to increase the public’s awareness of who we are,” he says. “We’ll get to a building, no doubt about that.”

America’s Semiquincentennial this year makes it an “opportune time to bring history to the forefront,” says Beth Stoner Wiegand. She says the group’s timing in ramping up community outreach in 2026 is “not by accident.” Rather than history being stodgy, the goal is to make it “inviting and compelling,” she says. As the region continues to expand, Cochran says its history is crucial to its future.

“If you’re building a community and growing, you should always have a foot grounded in where you came from,” he says.