![]() ![]() The pandemic also impacted Meow Wolf’s ability to incorporate local artists in their new installations, according to Geary. The layoffs, which came during the COVID-19 pandemic, resulted in the loss of over half of Meow Wolf’s workers, severely impacting the production process. “Now we just pay people to do that kind of work for us because we don't like it at all … Even though, prior to the layoffs, we did almost all of the design and building and fabrication of everything in-house.” And then we started doing it with architectural compounds because it's more efficient to do it that way and less messy,” Peterson said. “What used to be the case, way back in the day … (is that) we would make our caves out of actual adobe dug from the ground in New Mexico. The construction of “The House of Eternal Return” in Santa Fe differs from how the company approaches building the installations now, according to Peterson. “That's hard for me to stomach because I still want to engage in artistic expression, especially when it's put and held up at such a level with the funding and everything,” Behrens said. However, his issues with the corporation stem from their lack of inclusion of local artists in their more recent work. “We had this identity crisis (around expanding) of, ‘Oh no, that's gonna corrupt us,’ versus, ‘No, shouldn't this be what we do? Wouldn't you like to spend all your time doing this? And is there a way that we can sustain that and then get more cool brilliant artists who we know to do that too?’” Geary said.Įli Behrens, a musician and student at the University of New Mexico studying psychology, echoed this sentiment as Meow Wolf becoming a “monetized entity” instead of a free or donation-based space has allowed the artistic expression to reach a new level. It’s a question that highlights the dissonance between the corporatized, capitalistic nature of running a business and the “anti-gallery,” anti-establishment ethos that was a guiding principle for Meow Wolf and continues to be a guidepost, according to Benji Geary, co-founder of Meow Wolf. ![]() ![]() Vice president of the Meow Wolf Workers Collective union and senior creative engineer of research and development of Meow Wolf Conor Peterson asks: “Do we make better art with more money or is there such a thing as selling out or going corporate? And does that water down the art experience?” With this expansion in popularity and monetization comes questions of authenticity - is Meow Wolf still the homegrown art exhibit it started as in 2008? The Meow Wolf artists collective, initially founded in 2008 “as an informal DIY collective of Santa Fe artists,” has had a successful last few years with the founding of their flagship branch in Santa Fe in 2016 and opening subsequent locations in Denver, Las Vegas and a recently announced location in Grapevine, Texas, according to their website. ![]()
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