by I’m not sure where to start to try to even explain what Meow Wolf is. Wikpedia says it’s a “large-scale interactive and immersive art installation,” and I suppose that’s as good a description as anything. They are now up to four locations: Denver, Colorado; Sante Fe, New Mexico; Fort Worth, Texas; and Las Vegas, Nevada. Two more locations in Los Angeles, California and Houston, Texas are in the works.
What the heck is a “meow wolf?” Well, the name came from pulling two random words from a hat. That seems highly appropriate, given the nature of what we saw.
The location in Denver is in a 90,000 square foot building. Needless to say, you can spend hours and hours there, depending on your energy and interest levels.
The name of the installation here is “Convergence Station,” which their website describes as a “multiversal transit station serving Earth.”
Wikipedia gets even fancier with its description: “an interdimensional transport hub of the Quantum Department of Transportation linking Earth to the Convergence of Worlds, named for a cosmic Convergence event that resulted in fragments of four planets fusing together, consisting of an ecumenopolis’s C Street, the crystal mines of the Ossuary, the frozen world of Eemia, and a cosmic superorganism named Numina.” Got that?
The main installation is over three floors, with oddities stuffed in every nook and cranny. Objects that look stationary may in fact be a door to another room. It’s hard to feel like you’ve seen everything, and we repeatedly had to double back to try to get it all, but there’s no way –– I mean, no way –– we did.
The installation is contemporary art in all its glory, and Doug loved it and is now ready to visit every location. I don’t do so well with contemporary art –– I want to like it, but it rarely speaks to me –– and I was less enthused (though still fascinated).
Don’t get me wrong, I was glad we went, but also spent most of it feeling like it was a bunch of random art/junk thrown together and labeled intergalactic. Because of the sci-fi nature of it, it really was anything goes.
At $55 a person (not including parking!), I thought it was a bit pricey to effectively walk around and look at art installations. It was also absolutely packed with people and kids, and very loud.
I am honestly surprised there weren’t more crying kids because it is dark, overwhelming, often creepy, and the absolute definition of “sensory overload.”
