The new exhibit will include 12 exhibits within the 3,000-square-foot space being renovated.

Funding for the $1.8 million “Discover Northeast Michigan History” exhibit was made possible through grants and many generous contributions from community organizations and individuals.

Besser Museum Executive Director Christine Witulski said she is elated to see the project coming to fruition. She is extremely grateful for the community’s support.

“It’s just phenomenal,” Witulski said. “There are so many people who have played a part in making this happen that it’s really overwhelming … We would not have been able to do this without the generosity of our community.”

News Photo by Darby Hinkley Construction is underway in the Ice Age portion of the “Discover Northeast Michigan History” exhibit. This section features a small slide for children to enjoy

Split Rock Studios, out of Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, designed and is fabricating and installing the new exhibit.

In addition to the new exhibit, the Besser Museum recently acquired and catalogued one of the most comprehensive collections in all of North America, thanks to the extensive work of Tim Kent, guest curator at the museum.

“Tim has donated a dugout canoe, he has donated a birchbark canoe, he has donated his French-British-American collection,” Witulski said. “He is one of the most well-known amongst all of his academic peers as being the expert in his field. He has written so many books.”

Kent’s books include, “A Modern-Day Voyageur Family,” “Tahquamenon Tales, Experiences of an Early French Trader and his Native Family,” “Birchbark Canoes of the Fur Trade,” “Paddling Across the Peninsula, An Important Cross-Michigan Canoe Route During the French Regime,” “Ft. Pontchartrain at Detroit, A Guide to the Daily Lives of Fur Trade and Military Personnel, Settlers, and Missionaries at French Posts,” “Rendezvous at the Straits, Fur Trade and Military Activities at Fort de Buade and Fort Michilimackinac, 1669-1781,” and “Phantoms of the French Fur Trade, Twenty Men Who Worked in the Trade Between 1618 and 1758.”

Kent has twice received the State History Award from the Historical Society of Michigan. Years ago, he and his wife, Doree, and sons, Kevin and Ben, and their dog, Toby, paddled the 3,000-mile mainline fur trade canoe route across the U.S. and Canada, from Montreal to Ft. Chipewyan in northern Alberta. They completed the voyage in 15 annual segments, starting when the boys were 5 and 7 years old. After two decades of researching and replicating the articles of daily life of the Native people of the Great Lakes region, as well as the main French trade goods, Kent and his family spent a decade of summer vacations living with only those articles, as they recreated the lifeways of a French trader of the 1600s and his Native family.

News Photo by Darby Hinkley Jimmy Mayo, holding ladder, and Dan Senchuk, on the ladder, of Omega Electric and Sign Co., install one of the murals in the new “Discover Northeast Michigan History” exhibit, set to open in mid-January at Besser Museum for Northeast Michigan.

Kent donated two collections to the Besser Museum — the prehistoric collection and the historic collection. In total, the collections he donated contain 11,166 artifacts.

“We started this whole project by my looking at the sketches that Bob Haltiner made 53 years ago when he installed all the prehistoric cases,” Kent said. “I looked up every artifact, and the idea was to reduce the size and number of it, but also, to focus it really clearly on Northeast Michigan.”

Kent was able to expand on Haltiner’s work, incorporating his findings to present a more complete look at the daily life of early Northeast Michigan residents.

“I pushed back the history of people in Northeast Michigan by about 4,000 years,” Kent said. “Earlier than the Haltiners had ever found in all their decades of looking.”

He explained why he wanted to be involved in the project.

News Photo by Darby Hinkley Museum Assistant Matthew Wieschowski measures and prepares artifacts for the “Discover Northeast Michigan History” exhibit at Besser Museum.

“One of the earliest reasons that I came here to work at the museum from the inside was I wanted to, once and for all, find all of the items that had ever been found by the Haltiners at Ossineke sites, which is where I was born and raised, and where I live now,” Kent said. “So that I could dovetail that with my own finds.”

Kent has also been able to identify where items from the Haltiners’ copper collection originated from. By working page by page with the Haltiners’ Finds Journal, Kent was able to map out which site in Northeast Michigan each piece came from.

“That’s something that we’ve all wondered about for so long,” Kent said. “What is really, specifically, local?”

Kent talked more about the historic collection he donated to the museum.

“That’s absolutely a massive collection,” Kent said. “It’s one of the finest in all of North America, pertaining to the Fur Trade, Colonial, and Early American Period, from 1600 to 1850. And what’s unique about that collection is the way I gathered it. I made a master list of all the items that have ever been excavated, pertaining to life during that period, and what had ever been mentioned in period documents. My goal, then, was to acquire a representative of every one of those items. I, likewise, from the beginning, devised it into 18 different periods of life.”

News Photo by Darby Hinkley Museum Assistant Nicole Page smiles as she loads artifacts into one of the drawers to be installed in Besser Museum’s new “Discover Northeast Michigan History” exhibit, set to open in mid-January.

The all-encompassing historic collection features thousands of artifacts, divided into 18 separate exhibits, presenting nearly all aspects of the daily lives of the Native and European people who lived in the Great Lakes region in general, and northern Michigan in particular, for about 250 years.

“These artifacts are from Northeast Michigan, and they prove habitation for over 12,000 years,” Witulski said. “What’s so crazy is you’re handling things that someone fashioned 10,000 years ago, right here.”

Three of those 18 displays, pertaining to Fur Trade, Trapping, and Fishing, will be included in the exhibits within the “Discover Northeast Michigan History” gallery. The other 15 exhibits of the newly acquired collection will be presented in the Lower Gallery, to be open in about a year.

While Split Rock Studios workers have been installing exhibit components upstairs, in the lower level, Besser Museum staff has been working on placing the artifacts in the drawers that will be installed in the “Discover Northeast Michigan History” exhibit.

“The way it’s going to be displayed and the way it’s going to be described is going to really inform our audiences better,” Witulski said.

News Photo by Darby Hinkley Besser Museum Collections Manager Sarah Honeycutt displays the Fur Trade artifacts that will be included in the new “Discover Northeast Michigan History” exhibit.

Witulski said her amazing staff has been working hard to prepare the exhibit for the community.

“We would not be able to do a project of this magnitude without the team that we have in place right now,” Witulski said.

She said the leadership of the museum’s collections manager has been instrumental.

“Sarah Honeycutt is the best collections manager that this museum has ever had in its history,” Witulski said. “She’s so detailed. She and her crew of not just employees, but volunteer staff, have catalogued thousands of artifacts, updated our Past Perfect database, rearranged so many of the storage units so that we are at museum accreditation standards … We have made great strides under her leadership as collections manager … We are extremely fortunate to have her.”

Honeycutt, who grew up in Alpena, explained why this project is important.

“I came here as a kid,” she said of the Besser Museum. “It’s really nice to know that you’re building something that kids can come visit and feel inspired and curious to explore history … And they’ll be able to grow up with the exhibit, because it’s for all ages.”

“We have the most exciting elements for little kids,” Witulski added. “The murals are amazing, and the ice hill, and the forest scene, and we’re going to have the milkable cow in the farm.”

Witulski said many tasks go on behind the scenes to keep the museum running smoothly.

“Artifact care and preservation is like doing laundry,” Witulski said. “It’s every day, and there’s always something to do.”

“We’re at the stage where, every day, we’re seeing the actual, physical coming together of the things that we’ve been thinking about and planning and talking and writing about, all these years leading up to it, and now, it’s really actually happening within the building,” Kent said.

Witulski added that the new “Discover Northeast Michigan History” exhibit will feature many interactive components, including QR codes that you can take a picture of with your smartphone to study each collection online.

“It’s going to be so unbelievable,” she said of the new exhibit. “I just stand in awe … I think our community is going to be extremely proud.”

News Photo by Darby Hinkley Mike Hornnes, artist/fabricator with Split Rock Studios, works on one of the displays in the new “Discover Northeast Michigan History” exhibit at Besser Museum.

News Photo by Darby Hinkley Larry Giebel, builder with Split Rock Studios, cuts wood for use in building components of the new “Discover Northeast Michigan History” exhibit.

News Photo by Darby Hinkley Tim Kent, guest curator at Besser Museum, organizes and prepares artifacts to be featured in the new “Discover Northeast Michigan History” exhibit.

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