In the tale of Odysseus, it takes the legendary Greek hero a whole decade to find his way home from the Trojan War. The Dennos Museum Center is currently on its own epic odyssey – though Executive Director Craig Hadley insists the journey will be over well before it hits the 10-year mark.

When Hadley came aboard with the Dennos in 2019, one of his stated goals was getting the museum accredited through the American Alliance of Museums (AAM), a badge of honor that indicates museum best practices and helps attract better exhibits, more funding, and greater public trust – among other advantages. Five years later, that work is still in progress, but Hadley is confident the Dennos is now closer to the finish line than it is to the start.

“It’s not going to take until 2030 to get this done,” Hadley laughs. “We will probably apply for accreditation in 2026, and then that’s usually a 6-12-month process. So, we’re getting close, but we’ve got a couple years left to go.”

The AAM accreditation process is extremely rigorous, and only about 4 percent of the nation’s 33,000 museums are accredited. In order to gain accreditation, a museum must meet a lengthy list of “core standards,” which touch upon everything from fiscal sustainability to accessibility to collections care. Other requirements include both an “accreditation self-study” and a multi-day site evaluation from a team of peer reviewers.

Hadley has firsthand experience with this process: Before applying for the Dennos job in 2019, he served as director and curator of exhibitions and university collections at DePauw University’s Richard E. Peeler Art Center. He led that museum to successful AAM accreditation in 2018.

“Since I previously worked at and directed a museum that was accredited, I still get to participate in that site review process,” Hadley shares. “Once a year, they send me to another college museum, and I'm paired with another assessor, and I get to be that set of eyes on the ground, similar to what will happen with us in a couple years. It definitely helps to have some familiarity with that process, to get us ready for what’s to come.”

Even with his insider’s perspective, though, Hadley says there’s no shortcut to AAM accreditation. Preparing for the application process is all about adopting best practices, and that work can be much more involved – and much more expensive – than it sounds.

For instance, over the past three years, Hadley says the big focus at Dennos has been on “collections care and preservation.” That meticulous undertaking not only demanded significant staff time, but also underlined numerous areas where the museum has had to invest significant capital to establish new approaches for its care of artwork and other museum assets.

“The museum received a number of federal grant awards that have helped us to address some issues with collection storage and with just being able to inventory and care for things properly,” Hadley tells The Ticker. “That’s important, because a huge part of the accreditation review is making sure that all of that meets museum standards.”

Unsurprisingly, there have been some hurdles along the way.

“When we did our conservation assessment last summer, one of the big concerns that came up – and something we knew was an issue, but we didn't know just how bad it was – was that our promenade gallery, the large glass hallway that faces Front Street, really needed some light reduction film to protect the artwork,” Hadley says. “That project ended up eating into two of our grant cycles.”

In addition, because the Dennos is going through the accreditation maze in a post-pandemic world, the game has changed since Hadley last navigated it. For example, the museum has run into supply chains issues while trying to get its hands on new “shelving and painting racks” and other equipment for improved collections stewardship.

“We’d get a grant for new equipment, only to find that suppliers didn’t have the equipment that we needed,” Hadley explains. “Or, alternatively, I'd write a federal grant, we’d wait 8-10 months to hear if we were getting funded, and then by the time we got the money, the price of what we needed to buy had increased by 20 percent. The grant that I wrote for storage equipment even had a 5-7 percent escalation fee built in, but nobody ever builds in 20 percent. As a result, even though we received the funding we asked for, we weren’t able to buy all the equipment we originally wanted.”

Despite the challenges, Hadley says the Dennos has made substantial progress since The Ticker last checked in on the accreditation journey in July 2021. Beyond sizable gains around collections management and conservation, he points to investments in facility modernization and accessibility, as well as growth in public programming and community partnerships, as things that are helping broaden the reach and appeal of the museum. Not all of those gains have direct implications for accreditation, but Hadley thinks each will help pave the way to a brighter future at the Dennos.

“In the year and a half since our new curator, Liz Celeste, started, she’s radically rethought public programming, and we’ve more than doubled the number of public programs that we deliver,” Hadley says. “That's really driven attendance and brought a lot of new visitors and new patrons to the museum, including younger families.” Hadley also credits Celeste as the mastermind behind the museum’s new Certified Autism Center designation, part of a broader partnership with Traverse City Tourism to make TC into Michigan’s first Certified Autism Destination.

“As we move forward with accreditation, people are going to see the museum move firmly into the 21st century in terms of visitor friendliness, accessibility, and the types of programs that we're offering,” Hadley says. “We know we’re one of the anchor organizations in town for arts and culture, so we’re doing a lot of work to make sure we’re a more welcoming venue for everyone, regardless of age and ability.”