Entertainment
Meow Wolf will open new West Coast location — its sixth — despite recent layoffs
Entertainment company Meow Wolf on Friday announced a sixth location for its surreal art installations, naming Los Angeles as the latest to join Denver, Las Vegas and others.
The Santa Fe-based company, which started in 2008 as a loose New Mexico artists’ collective, has scaled up rapidly in recent years by opening or planning five other locations, including Denver’s, which opened in 2021.
“Opening new exhibitions is the key to creating sustainable jobs for our artists, not to mention growing our ever-expanding Meow Wolf Universe,” the company said in a press statement. “We are beyond excited to create the next immersive art exhibition in the entertainment capital of the world.”
The new Meow Wolf, which does not yet have an installation name, is slated to open in 2026 and will be located in a former movie theater. It will join two locations just outside Dallas (recently opened) and Houston (which has yet to open), as well as Meow Wolf Denver’s Convergence Station, which sits in a purpose-built, 90,000-square-foot structure just west of downtown Denver.
The company on Friday took pains to point out its differences from other forms of immersive entertainment. Its press statement did not mention recent layoffs in Denver and elsewhere. In April, the company let go of 165 employees, including 50 Denver workers, due to what it said was a better understanding of its business model. That included not only managers but retail employees and other public-facing positions as well.
Former employees said the company has gotten corporate and betrayed its artist-friendly, progressive values. Meow Wolf officials declined interviews during the layoffs, saying in an email that it was a painful but necessary step to shore up the business for the future.
“Unlike conventional escape rooms, selfie museums, or immersive projection mapped tours, they’re fully fleshed out and interconnected, interactive worlds with underlying storylines that invite a unique experience for every person who visits them,” according to the statement.
“Meow Wolf Los Angeles will encapsulate their signature style of maximalist fantasy woven together with a decidedly Angelino twist: cinematic mythos, mysterious eggs, absurd glitz, the fantastical spells cast by Hollywood, and novel connections to their existing Meow Wolf worlds in other cities … .”
“This is more than an immersive experience,” Jose Tolosa, CEO of Meow Wolf, added. “We want it to be a part of the city’s ongoing narrative of growth.”
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