When Meow Wolf first opened in Santa Fe, there was almost nothing like it for scale and ambition outside of art museums and biennials. But this was different; this wasn't artists trying to make it in the Serious Art World, hustling to New York and Miami to schmooze. This was homegrown, a ragtag group of locals with a few intrepid leaders. They'd done a few projects—good ones, playful and inventive—securing the notice of George R.R. Martin, the Game of Thrones author. He pledged $2.7 million to renovate and lease a vacant bowling alley for the group.

They did not disappoint. In 2016, they opened the House of Eternal Return, a life-sized Victorian house that opened, through various portals, into fantastical, mini-parallel universes of normalcy turned inside out. It was spectacular, vast, a place you could get lost in, wandering for hours chasing clues to the mystery of the family that lived there. And it was in a working-class neighborhood, visited by local families—tattooed dads with wallet chains and their wide-eyed kids.

It was also a thrilling new business model: artists taking control, doing business for themselves. But they were so successful, spawning franchise installations in other cities, that the scrappy collective began collapsing under its own weight, mired in acrimonious lawsuits. They had started broke, anarchic, choosing their name by randomly drawing two words from a hat at their first meeting. Today, they’re an institution with an estimated valuation in the hundreds of millions.

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Links:

• An essay I wrote a few months after Meow Wolf opened, and which seems quaint in retrospect: Meow Wolf: Dawn of a New Art World – Rainey Knudson, Glasstire, August 14, 2016

  
  

• Christina Rees and Neil Fauerso’s countertake to my piece two years later: How Do You Solve a Problem Like Meow Wolf? – Glasstire, October 1, 2018

  
  

• DIY Artists Paint The Town Strange, With Some Help From George R.R. Martin – Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi, NPR, March 27, 2016

  
  

• Can an Art Collective Become the Disney of the Experience Economy? – Rachel Monroe, The New York Times Magazine, May 1, 2019

  
  

• Artist sues Meow Wolf claiming copyright infringement – Phaedra Haywood, Santa Fe New Mexican, March 17, 2020

This post is part of The American 250, a series featuring 250 objects made by Americans, located in America, in honor of the country's 250th anniversary. 250 words on 250 works, from January 1 to December 31, 2026.

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