Immersive entertainment firm Meow Wolf, whose multiple floor-to-ceiling psychedelic art locations have attracted around 10 million visitors across its four venues since 2016, has revealed the location of its in-development Los Angeles-based exhibition.
Meow Wolf Los Angeles will be located in a portion of what is currently the Cinemark complex in Howard Hughes LA. The rest of the multiplex is expected to remain open to moviegoers, according to a spokesperson for Santa Fe, New Mexico-based Meow Wolf.
The exhibition is expected to open in 2026.
“We're creating our next surreal dream world in a movie theater in West Los Angeles, a nod to the city's cinematic soul,” Meow Wolf development director Amanda Clay said in a statement.
“HHLA, located near LAX and just off the 405, is located at the convergence of abundant culture and opportunity,” Clay added in the release. “Meow Wolf Los Angeles will take inspiration from its surroundings and translate it into something otherworldly, never before seen and yet familiar to Angelenos.”
In an interview with The Times, Meow Wolf artists said the Howard Hughes location will play into the space's theatrical roots. The goal is to turn our city's most ritual experience, that is, the act of going to the movies, into an interactive, art-driven wonderland.
Santa Fe, New Mexico-based Sean Di Ianni is helping to oversee Meow Wolf's showing in West Los Angeles, noting that it will lean into the space's film hub roots.
(Ethan Benavidez / For The Times)
Anticipate multiple venues of narrative-based art that strive to test perceptions, grappling not only with the stories we tell each other but also why we tell them, says Meow Wolf co-founder Sean Di Ianni, 39 years, who oversees the Los Angeles project.
“There are stories that are told in movie theaters, and then there are the stories of movie theaters and the stories of the people who work in movie theaters,” Di Ianni said. “But when you walk into that auditorium, it should be a blank space where stories are told. It's a bit meta. “This is a storytelling space about telling stories.”
Like previous Meow Wolf exhibitions, a significant number of installations will come from the local arts community. Meow Wolf curator Han Santana-Sayles, 31, a Murrieta native now residing in Pasadena, will lead the outreach to the Los Angeles art world, a process he finds in his infancy. A Meow Wolf space is a mix of elaborately designed environments and commissioned works from artists based in the host city.
Meow Wolf's Han Santana-Sayles will lead the collective's outreach to the Los Angeles arts community.
(Ethan Benavidez / For The Times)
“I'm looking for a very broad range,” he says. “I want to include people who do wild mapping projections. But I also want to find people who make only cakes, very, very well. Or they are painters. Or they draw. They have focused on this. We don't want it to read like a theme park. “We are a platform for contemporary art.”
While Di Ianni is keeping much of the narrative under wraps, he said the team imagined it would be “a world at a distant crossroads” in the middle of some kind of ritual.
“What if in this place we are creating some event occurs and people are attracted to that event in the same way that people are attracted to the birth of a panda in a zoo?” Says Di Ianni.”
This exhibition,” added Santana-Sayles, “addresses great mystical and religious questions. Not overtly, but somehow people will interpret themselves. “I think there is a lot to explore there.”
The Los Angeles location will be Meow Wolf's sixth exhibit. Last year, the group opened a location outside of Dallas, in Grapevine, Texas. An exhibit is expected to open in Houston later this year. There are additional spaces in Denver, Las Vegas and Santa Fe, Meow Wolf's hometown.
