The Montana Heritage Center is using synchronized LED displays, sound, lighting and motion-triggered content to bring the state's history to life through nine interactive gallery experiences.
With SNA LED: Montana Museum Brings History to Life
The Montana Heritage Center in Helena, Montana, has opened with an integrated audiovisual experience that combines LED displays, projection, spatial audio, lighting and motion-based interactivity to immerse visitors in the state’s history.
Designed by Electrosonic, the museum features 42 LED display faces across nine exhibits, supplied by SNA Displays, using a mix of 1.2 mm, 1.9 mm, and 2.5 mm fine-pitch LED technology. Digital design studio RLMG created interactive media that responds to visitor movement and touch, allowing exhibits to synchronize video, sound and lighting.
Interactive storytelling
The experience begins in the Homeland Gallery, where visitors pass through an entrance featuring coordinated projection, embedded LED elements and a curved LED ceiling designed to resemble a flowing river. The environment changes color and sound to introduce different themes before leading visitors into the museum.
Throughout the galleries, visitors encounter interactive installations depicting Indigenous history, wildlife, mining and transportation. Many stories are presented in the original languages of Montana’s sovereign nations.
One of the centerpieces is the Mineshaft Experience, where LED videowalls, spatial audio, synchronized lighting and a vibrating floor recreate the journey of miners descending underground. Visitors activate the sequence by pulling a rope inside a replica mine elevator before archival footage and digital recreations illustrate working conditions below the surface.
Multiple LED formats
Other installations include “Moving Through Time”, a large concave LED wall synchronized with an immersive audio soundtrack, and the Sovereign Nations Tipi, where motion sensors and interactive touchpoints trigger stories and scenes of village life.
According to SNA Displays, the project incorporates custom video walls, slim vertical LED displays and architectural LED elements that support exhibits throughout the museum rather than serving as standalone attractions.