DENVER — Meow Wolf trades on the dark side of American popular culture, in cults and conspiracies, in supernatural beings, extraterrestrials and unsolvable conundrums. The chain of oversized, immersive art installations teases visitors who wander through its dimly-lit environments by dropping hints about nefarious mysteries they could spend a lifetime — not to mention multiple $45 admission charges — trying to work out.
That spooky stuff feels right at home in Meow Wolf’s first two locations, Santa Fe and Las Vegas, desert cities located in the paranormal heartland. If your goal is to create narratives about underground evildoers, each worthy of their own “X-Files” episode, it helps to set them in places where alien sightings are routine and where the government actually has established secret military test sites. Northern New Mexico and Southern Nevada were creepy long before Meow Wolf arrived.
Visitors to the Kaleidogothic Cathedral at Meow Wolf’s new “Convergence Station” in Denver on Sept. 17, its opening.Credit…David Williams for The New York Times
It is a different story in central Colorado where Meow Wolf opened its third location last week. Fans of the popular attraction will find its special effects familiar: cavernous rooms pumped up with pulsing lights and sound, post-apocalyptic dioramas, steam punk scenery meant to be touched, clicked, climbed over and gawked at. Anyone looking to get their mind blown, and then blown again, will deem Meow Wolf a thrilling fun house.
Still, I found its ominous themes an awkward fit in Denver, a good-mood city founded on American optimism and sustained by Western exuberance, thanks to abundant sunshine, decent traffic flow and the country’s third lowest property taxes. In a land of Rocky Mountain highs, Meow Wolf’s eerie aura feels a little out-of-this-world. I was hoping for something more connected to place, less corporate.
That has not deterred crowds who are thrilled just to get inside. Denverites waited five years as the company planned and constructed its latest location, a five-story, installation built ground-up in the industrial Sun Valley neighborhood for more than $60 million. Fate positioned Meow Wolf to represent all the fun and freedom possible as the coronavirus pandemic ended and buyers snatched up 35,000 tickets in the first 24 hours of sales earlier this month.
On Sept. 18, when I arrived for the opening weekend, lines were long and parking sparse, though there were few signs of frustration over the mandatory face coverings or the inevitable bumping into one another that comes with a maxed-out venue. Denver Meow Wolf, in spite of itself, is a happy place.
That is due, in part, to the staff, which dresses in hooded cloaks and glow-in-the dark fashion accessories and keeps the mythology rolling, not an easy task when visitors walk through perplexing areas, like a hall of whispers with chattering walls; a psychic’s den offering live readings; a laundromat where marbles spin inside dryer windows. Visitors can sit behind the wheel of futuristic cars, flip through books in a pretend library, wander into a neon cathedral with a playable pipe organ, or enter a beauty salon, pizzeria or grocery store, each with its own surreal twist.
CreditCredit…David Williams for The New York Times
Somehow, these elements come together as “Convergence Station,” an interplanetary transit hub where different worlds connect, but where “Earthers” remain outsiders. There are sub-narratives that explain it all — if you can add up the clues. One story, for example, involves a bus driver named Pam, who once steered her vehicle right into “Convergence Station” and has now vanished.
If I don’t have the story arc correct, it is not for a lack of trying. I explored secret corridors, read text, watched animations and asked the actors/workers for help. I paid $3 for a wallet-size “Q Pass” that activated digital screens dispensing clues. I spent close to three hours.
In the end, I spent another $9.50 in the gift shop for a slim paperback that got me nearer to understanding Eemia, Numina, Ossuary and the other peoples and places that make up this scenario. It is possible, perhaps, that I tried too hard; the real thrill of Meow Wolf comes not in wrapping your mind around its enigmas, but in letting its 90,000-square feet of enigmas wrap themselves around you.
Immersive installations like Meow Wolf bill themselves as art, but they fit better into the category of entertainment venue, more like Disney World Resort, than MoMA. The company involved 110 Colorado artists in this project, giving each a bit of real estate to show their wares and paying them for their efforts. And I did recognize contributions from respected local names — a light sculpture by Collin Parson, a mural by Jaime Molina, an inflatable by Nicole Banowetz — but couldn’t find any signage on-site crediting their efforts.
As a result, their pieces are swallowed up by the overall bigness of the theme park and, in effect, rebranded to fit the dark and spooky Meow Wolf mode. Work by those and other artists, whose creations I’ve always found hopeful, vital and connected to community felt invisible here.
That anonymity is a choice on the part of Meow Wolf, which emphasizes collaboration and resists breaking the fourth wall, and maybe it’s the right one when it comes to giving customers what they truly want, or need, right now to escape a particularly stressful world. There are plenty of places to contemplate fine art in a city like Denver, but few offering the retreat Meow Wolf provides, and maybe individual recognition is something artists and critics value more than the general public.
But letting the local work, and the intention of the artist who made it, stand out might have been the thing that gave “Convergence Station” its own identity, a purpose beyond simply offering shock and awe, and distinguish it from the other Meow Wolf sites. Instead, it is the brand’s trademark spookiness that defines the place. If Meow Wolf actually is art, I struggle to find meaning in it.
Immersive art can feel new because it is trendy now, but it has a rich past, going back to early work by perceptual artists like James Turrell and Yayoi Kusama (her “Infinity Mirror Room — Phalli’s Field” was in 1965) or by adventurous theater companies, such as Punchdrunk, whose 2011 interactive “Macbeth” adaptation, “Sleep No More,” challenged ideas of what a play could be.
Those creators never matched the level of public interest Meow Wolf set off like a firecracker when it first opened in a former bowling alley in Santa Fe in 2016. That place caught on fast, attracting a million visitors in less than two years and inspiring scores of imitators.
But the earlier pioneers showed that immersive art could be mind-blowing and, at the same time, strive to say something about the human condition — that thing we expect art to aspire to. It’s a standard, and a purpose, that Meow Wolf, with its millions of dollars and millions of visitors, might aim for itself.
Ray Mark Rinaldi is an art critic in Denver.
Meow Wolf: Convergence Station
1338 1st St, Denver, Colo., (720) 792-1200; meowwolf.com.
