Last weekend for my birthday Susan and I visited the Meow Wolf installation in Grapevine, Texas. The experience was extremely reminiscent of the original Meow Wolf location in Santa Fe, New Mexico… and that’s kind of the problem.
It’s not you, Meow Wolf. It’s me.
I can already tell you I’ll be typing the word “Meow Wolf” a lot because before I tell you about my experience at the Meow Wolf in Texas, I need to explain who Meow Wolf are and what Meow Wolf in Santa Fe is like.
Meow Wolf (the group) is a collective of extremely talented and fringe artists from Santa Fe, NM. After failing to find venues for each of their individually unique and non-mainstream art projects, the members of Meow Wolf came together and began putting on their own art shows. I’m summarizing years of history in a couple of sentences, but after the group was donated an abandoned bowling alley in Santa Fe they turned it into Meow Wolf: The House of Eternal Return. If you want to get the tiniest taste of what all this is like, check out this trailer for their 2018 documentary (which I highly recommend), Meow Wolf: Origin Story.
Meow Wolf’s House of Eternal Return (again, this is the installation in Santa Fe) is extremely difficult to describe and harder to explain. Inside the building is a “house” you can enter. Everything inside the house can be touched, picked up, and examined. The more you look around you’ll begin to realize things aren’t quite right in this house; “something” has happened which appears to have opened a portal to the metaverse. The adventure really begins after opening the refrigerator door and discovering a hallway that leads to the center of the metaverse. From there you’ll discover an entire world of interconnected art installations, all of which, if you look hard enough, connect to the original story back in the house. There is no right or wrong way to experience the House of Eternal Return. You can spend your entire time inside the building trying to solve the mystery of what happened to this missing family or you can walk around touching things to see what they do.
In the parking lot of Santa Fe’s Meow Wolf are two large metal sculptures. One is a towering robot and the other is this gigantic spider. Despite not having anything to do with the House of Eternal Return’s overall story, in a way they kind of represent what Meow Wolf is: a home for artists and art that just doesn’t fit anywhere else. Susan, the kids, and I have visited the Santa Fe location twice and, if in the area, would probably go back again.
When Meow Wolf (the people) built Meow Wolf (the building) and the House of Eternal Return in Santa Fe, they had no idea if anyone would come to see it. People did. A lot of people. Search Google for “top 10 things to do in New Mexico” and Meow Wolf’s House of Eternal Return is on the list, up there with Albuquerque’s Hot Air Ballon Festival and Carlsbad Caverns. Meow Wolf has arrived.
And that brings us to Meow Wolf: The Real Unreal in Grapevine, Texas.
In the Meow Wolf documentary, it is explained that the House of Eternal Return (in Santa Fe) is just one of many things the group has created together. To be fair, it is the largest and most wildly successful thing, but it’s just one thing — the culmination of all these wacky, off-beat artists with completely different styles and mediums coming together and building the most incohesive thing that somehow feels cohesive. It’s the most original thing I’ve ever experienced.
And the location in Texas, The Real Unreal… is a copy of it.
Just like the House of Eternal Return (in Santa Fe), the Real Unreal (in Texas) also contains a house. And the people living inside this house also disappeared after accidentally opened a portal to the metaverse, which apparently happens more often than you would think.
And it’s not just the story. The house is very similar to the other house. Just like Santa Fe, there’s a secret passage way in the fireplace and chutes inside the washer and dryer. There’s a large room illuminated with black lights and full of orange and yellow branches, just like Santa Fe. You also enter the metaverse the same way, by entering the refrigerator.
But it’s not identical. The refrigerator here leads to a room with half a dozen other refrigerator doors connecting you to different parts of the metaverse. And the family is different. And while the art style is very similar, it’s different, too.
The whole thing feels like a group of artists were sent to Meow Wolf in Santa Fe for a month and then asked to recreate it from memory in Texas. While some of the details are different in Texas, the mind-blowing experience of a house opening up into bunch of weird, interconnected universes isn’t there if you’ve been to the location in Santa Fe.
Everything in Texas’s Real Unreal feels a little bit more… manufactured? Kid friendly? We first visited the Meow Wolf in Santa Fe only two weeks after they opened, and there were so many things we saw there that were… not fragile, but not industrial enough to withstand millions of kids touching and beating on things. There are dozens and dozens of motion sensors that trigger lights and sounds. There must be miles upon miles of wires running through that place. Santa Fe’s Meow Wolf contained a giant wall of tube televisions which everyone knows will not last forever. Tube televisions get hot and eventually quit working. Texas’s Meow Wolf features what appears to be a capsule hotel. None of the capsule doors open. They’re just paintings and they’re interesting to look at and they will never break unlike a giant pile of old CRT TVs.
If you’re old like me you remember playgrounds with metal slides that would burn you in the summer, tire swings that hung from skin-pinching chains, and monkey bars that were always just a little too high. Those playgrounds were a pile of sharp corners and tetanus infections. My kids grew up with McDonald’s playgrounds, with slides made of brightly colored plastic and no way to lose an eyeball. Meow Wolf’s Real Unreal feels a little like the latter. It feels streamlined, less dangerous, and more robust. I have no doubt that the people who created the original Meow Wolf have a document somewhere titled “things not to do next time” and the people in Texas took heed. In Santa Fe they figured out what worked and what didn’t work, what held up over time and what broke down, and used all that knowledge when building the Texas location. People who have never visited the Santa Fe location will never notice it, but this installation feels a bit more… processed.
The original Meow Wolf felt like the art world’s version of punk rock. The Texas location feels like a franchised version of that.
Let me put it another way. The Santa Fe location is an abandoned bowling alley, purchased for and donated to the group by George R. R. Martin. The Texas location is located inside the Grapevine Mall, with an entrance next to the Squishables store and not far from the mall’s Legoland area.
Almost everything I’ve written about Meow Wolf’s Real Unreal in Grapevine sounds negative and I want to say that Susan and I had a wonderufl time there. It’s fine! The experience delivers everything one would expect from visiting Meow Wolf, and if I hadn’t already been to the location in Santa Fe I would give the Texas location five out of five stars. I went into the experience blind and had assumed that like the Santa Fe location, the Meow Wolf in Texas was going to be a completely new and mind-blowing experience and while it was entertaining, it felt very similar to the other location and a little more kid-friendly. If you’ve never been to a Meow Wolf installation (there are only four, I believe) and find yourself in the Dallas-Fort Worth area I highly recommend checking it out.
While you’re there, say hello to the Dancing Disco Demon hiding in one of the refrigerators!