The House That Art, Fantasy and Mystery Built

Featured on nytimes.com

Last week, the Santa Fe-based art collective Meow Wolf introduced “The House of Eternal Return” — an interactive, multimedia art experience that one of Meow Wolf’s co-founders, Vince Kadlubek, refers to as “immersive storytelling.” And appropriately for the otherworldly space, created by a team of 135 artists, maestros-of-fantasy like George R. R. Martin and Neil Gaiman attended the opening.

Upon arrival, guests are told a magical-yet-brief story about the Seligs, the imagined family around which the backstory revolves. They once occupied the house, and then — by appearances, rather suddenly — they left. Visitors are then free to roam the 20,000-square-foot “House,” to stitch together the rest of the narrative on their own. Clues range from elements of the big picture — about the home’s whereabouts, and what happened there — to the smallest personal details of the former fictional residents. (To create authentic environments in the children’s rooms, artists collaborated with local children over many months.) Needless to say, nothing about this work of art is behind velvet ropes. Hands-on exploring — call it snooping — is de rigueur.

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