Denver Meow Wolf can’t get out of own shadow
Spooky feel doesn’t fit in sunnier city; works by locals lost in exhibit’s theme-park bigness
MDENVER eow Wolf trades on the dark side of American popular culture, in cults and conspiracies, in supernatural beings, extraterrestrials and unsolvable conundrums. The chain of oversize 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, Nev., 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.
It is a different story in central Colorado, where Meow Wolf opened its third location last week, titled Convergence Station.
Fans of the popular attraction will find its special effects familiar: cavernous rooms pumped up with pulsing lights and sound; post-apocalyptic dioramas; steampunk 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 for more than $60 million. Fate positioned Meow Wolf to represent all the fun and freedom possible as the coronavirus pandemic ebbed, and buyers snatched up 35,000 tickets in the first 24 hours of sales this month.
Immersive installations like Meow Wolf bill themselves as art, but they fit better into the category of entertainment venue, more like Disney World than New York’s Museum of Modern Art. 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 but couldn’t find any signs 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.
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.