Meow Wolf

History

Originating in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Meow Wolf was formed informally in February 2008 as an artist collective partnership by Quinn Tincher, Matt King, Matt Smith, Megan Burns and Vince Kadlubek. The partnership anarchically formed and reformed as it installed larger projects through time. Some partners tried to exclude others by claiming to exclusively own the art collective partnership via LLCs formed subsequent to the breakout Due Return project. In October 2014, Sean Di Ianni became a member of VCSME Art City LLC, as Meow Wolf joined the Creative Startups business accelerator competition that taught LLC members to form a corporation to dispossess the anarchic partnership of its intellectual property. The other members of that new 2014 LLC were members of the older MW LLC from September 2011: Matt King, Corvas Brinkerhoff, Emily Montoya, Caity Kennedy, and Vince Kadlubek, "a community of punk, quirky, artistic pals" hoping to take exclusive ownership of the 25-or-so-partner anarchic partnership supplying Santa Fe and other locales with alternative art and music venues. Having documented much of its own early visual history, Meow Wolf produced a documentary film about its own genesis, entitled Meow Wolf: Origin Story, which was released in 2018. By 2019, the collective held the works of 200 different artists and employed more than 150 people. By 2024, Meow Wolf employed 1,000 people across the country. It has received widespread praise for its impact on the New Mexico and national art scene. The name was chosen by randomly drawing two words from a hat at the first meeting of the collective (everyone present put two scraps of paper with a word on each one in).

Early projects 2008–2014

In the early days, the artists' first large-scale venture working outside the establishment represented in Santa Fe's galleries was The Due Return, a more than 70-foot-long (21 m), two-story ship installed in 2011 into the Muñoz Waxman Gallery of the Center for Contemporary Arts and filled with rooms and objects suggesting details of implied inhabitants' lives. This was partly funded by a microgrant from the city government. Its success -- a record CCA crowd at the opening -- prompted an invalid June 2, 2011 Meow Wolf trademark application by David Loughridge (incorrectly applying as an individual, even though the entire Meow Wolf art collective partnership actually conceived and installed the immersive art). The David Loughridge estate assigned the invalid Meow Wolf trademark (Serial# 85336601) to Meow Wolf, Inc. in January 2017

Some other notable projects include: "Biome Neuro Norb" (2008), a science fiction-inspired installation, "Auto Wolf" (2009), an installation centered around the destruction and reuse of a donated car, "The Moon is to Live On" (2010), a multimedia theatrical play, "Geodecadent I" and "Geodecadent II" (2010), a series of installations based on geodesic domes.

In pursuit of teaching collaborative arts practices, Meow Wolf formed CHIMERA in 2011. In 2012 CHIMERA worked with approximately one thousand Santa Fe students to create Omega Mart, an installation in the form of a fictitious grocery store stocked with "satirical goods". Omega Mart was deliberately placed away from Santa Fe's arts district to attract a more diverse audience. The Omega Mart concept was revived at Area15 in Las Vegas in 2021. In 2013, CHIMERA began working with the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History's classroom mentorship program for gifted students on an installation named "Project Dreamscape". As of 2022 CHIMERA was no longer active.