May 3—Meow Wolf announced Friday it plans to open a sixth permanent immersive arts exhibition in Los Angeles by 2026, news that comes less than three weeks after the company laid off more than 100 workers.
The Santa Fe-based entertainment company said its Meow Wolf Los Angeles site will be in a movie theater but didn’t provide details on the size or full name of the project. Kate Daley, a spokeswoman for Meow Wolf, said the company plans to announce the location’s name in coming months.
In its Friday announcement, the company said the Los Angeles exhibition will “encapsulate” Meow Wolf’s style of “maximalist fantasy woven together with a decidedly Angelino twist: cinematic mythos, mysterious eggs, absurd glitz, the fantastical spells cast by Hollywood, and novel connections to their existing Meow Wolf worlds in other cities, all that thrive under an overarching cosmic Meow Wolf Universe.”
The Los Angeles location will be Meow Wolf’s third since 2023, when it opened an immersive arts exhibition in Grapevine, Texas, a city in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area. The company has plans to open its fifth exhibition sometime this year in Houston, with a date expected to be announced soon, Daley said.
The company opened its Las Vegas, Nev., location, Omega Mart, and its Denver location — Convergence Station, in 2021. Its original Santa Fe exhibition, House of Eternal Return, opened in 2016.
The announcement of Meow Wolf’s expansion to Los Angeles comes after it laid off 104 workers in mid-April. Two days before the layoffs, the company said it intended to cut up to 165 jobs. That number eventually dropped to 159, although about 55 layoffs in Las Vegas jobs are still pending as the company and the union that represents its employees, the Meow Wolf Workers Collective, reach an agreement. Daley said the company has “nothing new to share about Vegas cuts.”
The company said it also plans to reduce the salaries of the executive team — including Meow Wolf Ceo Jose Tolosa and each of his “direct reports” — by 10% for the remainder of the year, as well as eliminate “expensive” software contracts, reduce spending on professional services, close its New York City office, scrap plans for a Los Angeles office, reduce travel and other spending by close to $1 million and reduce funding for the Meow Wolf Foundation.
Tolosa, CEO of Meow Wolf since January 2022, said in a statement the new Los Angeles exhibition will “more than an immersive experience.”
“We want it to be a part of the city’s ongoing narrative of growth,” he said. “Being in Los Angeles, the entertainment capital of the world, we’re humbled to add to the dynamic interplay between art and entertainment here. Meow Wolf Los Angeles will blur the lines between reality and fantasy, inviting everyone to become part of a living, breathing spectacle.”
Sean Di Ianni, a co-founder of Meow Wolf and the senior creative director for Meow Wolf Los Angeles, said in a statement the team has made previous trips to Los Angeles, where they had dreamed of “creating something in its layered and ever-changing network of creativity.”
“L.A. is more than a physical place; it extends deep into the global landscape of human imagination, constantly pushing its own bounds,” Di Ianni said. “Meow Wolf Los Angeles will stretch these cinematic horizons by weaving together an unpredictable tapestry of art, story and interactivity.”