The year is early but here's the best news I've seen so far in 2018. Meow Wolf is opening an enormous new "world."
The Santa Fe-based arts collective has been searching for a new city for their second permanent installation and has announced their decision to land next in Denver, Colorado. Their first installation, House of Eternal Return, is a trippy 20,000 sq. ft. immersive space built within a gutted bowling alley. Backed by George RR Martin, over 150 artists created this first "world" which follows a clever and detailed narrative. (I spent two consecutive days there in early October and am already planning a return trip… it was that good.)
Denver's alt-weekly paper Westword reports:
[They] will announce where they'll build Meow Wolf's first permanent exhibition in a major market. And it's a major project, too: a $50 million, four-story (plus mezzanine), 90,000-square-foot building that will hold 60,000 square feet of exhibitions, three times the size of Meow Wolf's House of Eternal Return in Santa Fe, along with a restaurant, bar and retail and support spaces.
For the past year, Meow Wolf has explored various spots around Denver — the Sports Castle, the old Denver Post plant off I-70. And the winner? A spot right in the gritty heart of Denver, a triangular space created by the Auraria Parkway and the viaducts of Colfax Avenue and Interstate 25, just across the river from Sports Authority Field and close to the Pepsi Center and Elitch Gardens…which is significant, because Meow Wolf's Denver development partner is Revesco Properties, a real estate and management company that's an owner and managing partner in Elitch Gardens. In fact, the Meow Wolf team will work out of Elitch's HR office before that building is demolished and Meow Wolf Denver constructed. Groundbreaking is slated for this spring; Meow Wolf Denver's target opening is early 2020.
…Meow Wolf isn't stopping in Denver, though. The group is still talking to Austin and Las Vegas, runners-up in the race to host the first major expansion, and it's also looking at possibilities in Washington, D.C., Phoenix and Minneapolis.
You can get early bird tickets now.
Previously: Get your face into Meow Wolf's long, striped 'Experience Tube'
