Meow Wolf Is Bringing Its Maximalist Magic to New York City

At long last, Meow Wolf is bringing its otherworldly enchantment to New York City, with plans to open its seventh permanent exhibition at Pier 17 in South Street Seaport. The immersive experience company, which launched as an art collective in Santa Fe in 2008, announced the project at the SXSW festival in Houston today.

For years, Meow Wolf fans have been waiting for the company to come to the East Coast. The success of the original Santa Fe exhibition, which opened in 2016, inspired ambitious expansion plans announced in 2019 to open 15 locations in the next five years.

The pandemic slowed things down, and scuttled plans for an interactive hotel in Phoenix and exhibition in Washington, D.C. But Meow Wolf debuted permanent exhibitions in Las Vegas in 2021, Denver in 2022, Dallas Grapevine in 2023, and Houston in 2024, with Los Angeles on track to open in late 2026. Now, with New York officially in the works, the East Coast expansion is finally back on.

“It’s a dream come true for us,” Vince Kadlubek, Meow Wolf’s cofounder and chief vision officer, told me. “Some of the greatest art institutions on this planet are in New York, and amazing DIY performance spaces and live venues. There’s just so many reference points in New York that we’ve been inspired by our entire lives. We’ve always known that we wanted to do a project in New York, but we needed to grow and evolve as a creative company to reach the standards of a New York project.”

If you’ve never been to a Meow Wolf, the exhibitions exist at the intersection of an art museum, an interactive theater production, and a theme park, with high-tech light, sound, and video melding with painting and sculpture for an immersive storytelling experience. And the company is hoping to take that to the next level in New York.

“This is a a new tier of exhibition. We’re gonna bring detailed physical environments and remarkable digital environments together in a mixed reality ecosystem,” Kadlubek said. “We are striving to create alternate worlds that are alive—an immersive, animated world that is responding to your actions.
It’s gonna be something that nobody in the world has seen before.”

Finding space in Manhattan big enough for one of Meow Wolf’s maximalist exhibitions was no easy task. At Pier 17, Meow Wolf is partnering with the Seaport Entertainment Group, which operates a series of Jean-Georges Vongerichten restaurants at the site, as well as open-air concert venue called the Rooftop, under the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge.

“The Seaport has close to 400 years of history. It used to be a Dutch fur trading port. Up until 20 years ago, it was a very famous fish market. Today it’s an amazing cultural center,” Meow Wolf CEO Jose Tolosa—a 10-year resident of the city—told me. “It has reinvented itself through the years, in the same way that the city reinvents itself consistently. It pays homage to to our immigrant past, present, and future in many ways.”

Meow Wolf Gas Station in the in Projected Desert in Meow Wolf Las Vegas. Photo by Kate Russell, courtesy of Meow Wolf.

Wherever it goes, Meow Wolf always looks to tap into the local community and its history, with installations designed by local artists complementing the work of the in-house team. New York, of course, will offer no shortage of talent to add to the mix.

“They will become part of our family, just like every group of local artists that work in in every single Meow Wolf exhibition,” Tolosa said. “Meow Wolf artists always impress me with their own unique way of looking at the world, and I can’t wait for the New York filter on that view.”

And for all that Meow Wolf explores portals to alternate dimensions, its storylines are also rooted a sense of place, inspired by history. For New York, Kadlubek expects to highlight the role the city played in American independence, and the meaning of freedom, as well as how it has become a melting pot for cultures from across the globe.

“As we get to know local artists and curators, I’m sure a lot of the story of New York will start to come through authentically,” he said.

The exhibition is still in the early concept stages, even after a year of talks with the Seaport to secure the location. Kadlubek estimated a late 2027 or early 2028 opening, adding that it was “probably safely say that this is going to be our most expensive project project yet.”

Neon Kingdom in Meow Wolf the Real Unreal in Grapevine, Texas. Photo by Kate Russell, courtesy of Meow Wolf.

Despite its impressive growth over the years, the company has hit speed bumps along the way, including three rounds of layoffs—one in 2020 and two last year. The first of those was a reduction in staff at the exhibitions, and in-character actors were on hand to interact with visitors. The second, Tolosa told me, was a means of adjusting staffing needs from the lead up to opening two locations in back-to-back years, compared to the two-year gap before Los Angeles will debut.

The Meow Wolf Workers Collective has been outspoken in its criticism of the layoffs. Company employees first unionized in 2020 and have secured contracts in Santa Fe, Denver, and Las Vegas, with negotiations ongoing at Dallas. (There are currently 962 staff members.)

Meow Wolf has also faced criticism for setting up shop in Texas, given the state’s restrictive laws and outlawing of gender-affirming care for minors, among other anti-LGTBQ legislation. I asked Kadlubek if the company felt an added pressure to continue to tell diverse stories given the current political climate.

“We need courageous champions who are willing to stand up for human rights and what’s made this country great, and that includes the incredible weave of cultures that America has always welcomed,” he said. “And honestly, New York represents that more than any other city.”