My eighteen-month-old daughter, Imogen, had a blast. Its loud, colorful, and out-there Pop Surrealism was turned up to the 11-and-under crowd’s volume. Like a Big Mac, the immersive experience hit all the pleasure points. You may open the refrigerator or the dryer and find yourself drawn into one of the cleverly engineered passages to an alternate dimension. Touching notebooks in the little boy’s room provide clues to understanding his motivations for creating a rift in the multiverse. Several screens show footage of the inventor discussing his theories. Photos on the stairs help you piece together the family line and an inter-generational tale of jealousy and secrets. The dining room table vibrates with the inciting machine. As an explorer at Meow Wolf you can observe the strange anomalies from the house which, as a short video from a Men in Black-style agent explicitly tells you, are the “hopes, dreams, and fears of the members of the family.” The Victorian house has been quarantined by a shadowy agency and the family vanished. In the darkened warehouse, warm golden light spills from the three bedroom home with white picket fence, Thomas Kinkadey welcoming. The conceit of the 33,000 square foot fun house is that a boy stole his grandfather’s time and space manipulation device and inadvertently invited chaos into his family’s Mendocino home. My following criticisms may have more to say about my lofty expectations and prejudices than the intention or talent of Meow Wolf collective’s artists, but I’ll offer them to you in all their imperfections. I realize it’s all a matter of taste, or so the saying goes. To arbitrate high and low art is not my intention here. Despite this, I can’t believe it’s not better. Moreover, the ragtag group of artists who made Meow Wolf have summarily shared their wealth nationally through generous DIY art collective funding and I look forward to the next franchise opening in Denver in 2020. After three and a half hours in the converted bowling alley, I can say that I am in awe of the perseverance, planning, and craftsmanship that went into realizing Meow Wolf. When we arrived before the 10:00 am opening time last Saturday the line was already forming outside the most attended attraction in New Mexico. The sheer scale and scope of the “immersive, interactive experiences that transports audiences of all ages into fantastic realms of story and exploration” was remarkable. A cacophonous assemblage of wild ideas loosely connected by a soft sci-fi narrative packaged for tidy consumption. Warning: Graphic language and spoilers ahead Meow Wolf: House of Eternal Return was a fun house.
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