meow wolf in denver: santa fe’s deliriously popular art ...€¦ · a rendering of meow wolf...
TRANSCRIPT
By Dylan Owens January 4, 2018
Meow Wolf in Denver: Santa Fe’s deliriously popular art collective lands with permanentinstallation
theknow.denverpost.com/2018/01/04/meow-wolf-denver-art-gallery-opening-announcement-2018/171407/
1/17
2/17
3/17
6/17
8/17
11/17
<>Lead artist Mat Crimmins, 45, shows off a creature that will haunt Meow Wolf's Denver location on Dec. 19, 2017 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The Meow Wolfartist collective has grown significantly since its immersive art installation/museum hybrid, the House of Eternal Return, opened in Santa Fe, New Mexico inMarch 2016. (Dylan Owens, The Denver Post)A portal to another world is cracking open near downtown Denver.
In early 2020, Meow Wolf, the artist collective responsible for Santa Fe’s immersive art exhibit the House of Eternal Return, will open a permanent installationin Denver. The $50 million reality-wrinkling playhouse will rise 30 feet above Interstate 25, Colfax Avenue and Auraria Parkway viaducts that wrap it on threesides.
It’s the first step, Meow Wolf CEO Vince Kadlubek said, in transforming the DIY group into a nationally known name.
And Denver is just the beginning: Meow Wolf plans to announce expansions to three other major markets around the U.S. in 2018. It’s been scouting citiesincluding Austin, Washington, D.C., Oklahoma City, Minneapolis, Las Vegas and Los Angeles.
“This term ‘major market’ has been a really important term for us,” Kadlubek, 35, said. “We’ve been living by this term. Denver is the major market that we’regoing to.”
The project — tentatively titled Meow Wolf Denver — is slated to open at 1338 First St. in Denver’s Sun Valleyneighborhood, just minutes away from Elitch Gardens and a short stroll from Mile High Stadium. The deal wasbrokered with Revesco Properties, which with Second City Real Estate and Kroenke Sports & Entertainmentpurchased Elitch Gardens for $140 million in 2015. A warehouse and an office building once used by Elitch’swill be razed when construction on Meow Wolf Denver begins in the third quarter of 2018.
City Councilman Albus Brooks, whose district includes Sun Valley, said he’s excited to have Meow Wolf, andhopes its presence will lead to further investment in entrepreneurial art projects.
“It’s a big day for artists and a great day for downtown Denver for us to be able to land it,” he said. “This is goingto be the gift that keeps on giving.”
Meow Wolf signed a 20-year, $60 million lease on the space, far and away the largest deal in its decade history.Just seven years prior to inking the multimillion-dollar contract, Meow Wolf’s top brass were fashioning artinstallations from shoplifted Christmas lights and hauls from the Dumpster.
“The big question is, can this art collective maintain its character while it’s growing into this multibillion-dollarcompany,” Kadlubek said. “If we can, if this DIY art collective can turn into a multibillion-dollar art company andretain its character, then we’re going to be a cultural movement.”
14/17
Vince Kadlubek of Meow Wolf talks on the phone at the group’s future Denver location nearMile High Station on Wednesday, January 3, 2018. (AAron Ontiveroz, The Denver Post)
To raise funds for the project, Meow Wolf will start selling three tiers of tickets to its Denver exhibit today: 20,000 general admission tickets for opening weekof Meow Wolf Denver ($50); 1,000 tickets to a private gala event on its opening night ($1,000); and 100 lifetime passes, which are good for two tickets to anyMeow Wolf space, event and concert in the world for the rest of your life ($10,000). Those are available at meowwolf.com.
Meow Wolf Denver will be similar to the Santa Fe space, albeit more ambitious. It, too, will include an immersive narrative experience designed to transportits patrons through the looking glass. Santa Fe’s House of Eternal Return offers the mystery of the Selig family, whose home has become riddled with portalsto other universes. Denver’s concept is being kept under wraps for the time being, but expect more info on it later this year.
Standing four stories tall at a total of 90,000 square feet, Meow Wolf Denver will feature an exhibition space triple the size of the Santa Fe space. It will alsohave a bar, cafe, retail space and notably, a music venue. Meow Wolf will be the primary booker for the 800-person venue — for comparison, the GothicTheatre in Englewood has room for 1,000 — but any independent promoter can rent the space.
“Santa Fe was a hobby in a lot of ways compared to this,” Kadlubek said.
During a visit to Meow Wolf’s manufacturing facility in Santa Fe in mid December, work on the Denver exhibit was already underway.
Steel workers, carpenters and artists focused their efforts on what’s been dubbed “the cathedral,” a two-story kaleidoscopic chapel that will host a 32-notepipe organ haunted by a gang of gargoyles and other creatures. Sparks flew as a welder worked on its dome, which will be flanked by two spires that will spinand scatter light through 2,000 square feet of stained glass when activated.
Meow Wolf execs surveyed nine locations — including The Denver Post’s old printing plant at 4400 Fox St. — during a year-and-a-half hunt for a Denverlocation. RiNo was too hipster. Globeville was too far away.
The Sun Valley location — set in the shadows of three highway viaducts that form a boundary that resembles a droopy slice of pizza — didn’t jump out atthem at first, either. But the artist enclave prides itself on turning refuse into treasure.
“I think it’s going to be one of the most interesting buildings in the United States when it’s done,” said Meow Wolf co-founder Corvas Brinkerhoff. “Becausealmost everybody else would see that and go, that’s not developable. We see that and we go, that’s interesting.”
Its choice to settle in Sun Valley could be a turning point for one of Denver’s poorest neighborhoods. Just as Meow Wolf hopes Denver will catalyze itsexpansion, Meow Wolf could help revitalize the neighborhood and its adjacent stretch of the Platte River.
Meow Wolf will join the $65 million Steam on the Platte development — a mixed-use project that will bring condos, a Lyft headquarters and arestaurant/brewery to Sun Valley — which has already begun taking shape on the other side of Colfax Avenue. Last year, Sun Valley received a $30 milliongrant from the federal government that will go toward developing 750 units of mixed-income housing, parks and an education hub in the area among otheramenities.
A rendering of Meow Wolf Denver. (Provided by Meow Wolf)
Meow Wolf spurred a similar transformation in its native neighborhood, Santa Fe’s Siler Rufina Nexus. Once a no-go for out-of-towners, the Meow Wolf ArtComplex planted the seeds for a burgeoning business district.
“What they did that others haven’t been as successful at, is they didn’t put it in the heart of Santa Fe,” Santa Fe Mayor Javier Gonzales said. “That’s theexciting part. It really broadened the scope of where tourists will go in Santa Fe. That whole district now around Meow Wolf is ready to explode into somekind of art district.”
15/17
A May 2017 report by the New Mexico Economic Development Department found that Meow Wolf could represent a combined direct and indirect economicimpact of more than $1 billion over the next 10 years.
In rapidly changing Denver, a large out-of-state entity coming into a low-income neighborhood is bound to raise concerns. Meow Wolf is B-Corp certified — arecognition granted to companies that meet certain standards of ethical performance and transparency — but it is still a corporation.
Kadlubek admitted that when Meow Wolf initially opened in Santa Fe, the art community felt threatened. But ultimately, he said, it elevated the scene. “Wewant Meow Wolf Denver to be this economic engine that, if it’s as profitable as we think it can be, can go towards supporting all types of existing and newtypes of programming art in Denver.”
Chief Creative Officer Matt King, left, and Lead Artist Mat Crimmins talk in Meow Wolf’sfabrication warehouse in Santa Fe, New Mexico on Dec. 19, 2017. The Santa Fe based artistcollective is focusing on its next permanent installation, which comes to Denver in early 2020.
(Dylan Owens, The Denver Post)
Artists from Colorado and beyond have so far submitted 247 proposals for Meow Wolf Denver, according to Jessica Vradenburg, a Meow Wolf projectmanager. She didn’t say how many it would accept, but stated all approved projects would be compensated.
Merhia Wiese, a Denver-based business development project manager, said local artists’ response so far has been overwhelmingly positive, if a littleincredulous.
“The adage ‘It’s too good to be true’ is definitely in the air,” Wiese said.
Kadlubek said he aims to use Meow Wolf’s success to bolster the arts scene. Meow Wolf donated $500,000 to arts organizations in 2017, including $70,000to various Denver groups. It gave $100,000 to DIY spaces around the country after a deadly fire at Ghost Ship, an Oakland, Calif., DIY venue, caused anationwide crackdown on the artist spaces. Of that $20,000 went to a fund administered by Denver Arts and Venues. It also donated $10,000 to Denver DIYvenues Rhinoceropolis and Glob earlier in the year.
“Meow Wolf in Denver isn’t going to be everything to everybody, nor do we want it to be. We’re going to be this really prominent, really blatant thing rightdowntown, a very public-facing institution that is really thinking about kids and families most of the time.”
Salena Martinez, 24, and Luisa Storey, 22, play the bones of a creature at Meow Wolf’s Houseof Eternal Return like a marimba on Dec. 18, 2017 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The exhibit is animmersive hybrid between an art installation and a museum. (Dylan Owens, The Denver Post)
Denver Arts and Venues deputy director Ginger White-Brunetti viewed Meow Wolf’s presence in Denver as a compliment to the strength and community ofthe city’s arts scene. “That’s a recipe that Meow Wolf saw, and said this is where we want to be.”
Given Denver’s population is eight times that of Santa Fe, Kadlubek doesn’t expect Meow Wolf to shake the artist community as hard as it did in Santa Fe.
Meow Wolf has grown remarkably since it was founded in 2008. From its humble beginnings as scroungers and spare-time creatives, Kadlubek said thecollective began doing things “as right as we could” around 2010. It began to concentrate on its mission to empower artists and keep art viable to the public,renting a 2,000-square-foot warehouse and raising money to write art grants.
16/17
Last year, the company made $8.1 million in revenue, turning $3.3 million in profits, Kadlubek said.
In 2015, George R.R. Martin, author of the fantasy book series that was adapted into HBO’s popular television show “Game of Thrones,” bought the defunctbowling alley the Meow Wolf Art Complex complex is housed in for $750,000 — a fraction of the $6 million the project cost in total — specifically to lease it toMeow Wolf. Martin is now among Meow Wolf’s largest investors, and is a major investor in Meow Wolf’s Denver project.
Meow Wolf creative director Caity Kennedy, right, manipulates a bridge in a virtual realityrendering of Meow Wolf’s Denver installation on Dec. 19, 2017 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Theart collective plans to bring a concept similar to the House of Eternal Return, their immersiveart installation/museum hybrid in Santa Fe, to Denver in 2020. (Dylan Owens, The Denver
Post)
“Over the past two years, hundreds of thousands of visitors have explored House of Eternal Return in Santa Fe and thrilled to its unique blend of mystery,fantasy, and fun — a world of imagination made tangible by the amazing artists of Meow Wolf,” Martin said in a release. “I couldn’t be more excited to learnwhat weirdness we’ll find behind the new doors that Meow Wolf will be opening for us in Colorado.”
Today, Meow Wolf employs about 200 people, including the 135 it recently added to prepare for its imminent expansion. That number will grow as MeowWolf marches to new metropolitan frontiers. Kadlubek estimated that Meow Wolf Denver alone would employ more than 300 employees once operational.
“Denver is the most culturally significant city in the United States right now. That’s because of our generation, and it’s because of the way that (Denver) islistening, and the way creativity is valued still,” Kadlubek said. “It still has the ability to survive here.”
17/17