Lyra’s Keep is a place for rest and reflection. This cavernous haven welcomes visitors to take a seat, to explore the ancient history of the Y’ruks, and marvel at the miniature worlds preserved within the stone columns. Lyra’s Keep was built by the Y’ruks, a people of the Ossuary world, as a memorial dedicated to those whose lives were lost in a volcanic cataclysm. Following the cataclysm, this space became a symbol of hope, a place to build a new society and preserve the past using the memory storing properties of Oss. Lyra’s Keep also commemorates Lyra Osstrand, the first Y’ruk to commune with Oss. The statue at the front of the room depicts Lyra holding a large Oss crystal. Courtesy/Meow Wolf
MEOW WOLF News:
SANTA FE — Meow Wolf, the immersive art and entertainment company that grew from a scrappy artist collective into a certified B Corporation hosting millions of visitors per year, has been named a TIME100 Companies Industry Leader in Travel & Tourism. Read the profile here. The newly launched list, an expansion of the TIME100 brand, recognizes the companies making an extraordinary impact within their sectors. Meow Wolf is among the inaugural class of honorees.
The recognition reflects Meow Wolf’s trajectory from a group of artists who turned a refrigerator into a portal to another world to a company that has helped define, and in many ways create, the category of large-scale immersive art. The DIY group of artists, known for throwing warehouse parties and scavenging for recycled materials to make their art, have now scaled to five locations across Santa Fe, Las Vegas, Denver, Dallas, and Houston, with Los Angeles and New York in the works.
“Thirteen million people have stepped through a refrigerator, a grocery store, a radio station, and other impossible portals into places that thrust them into the unknown and closer to each other,” said Matthew Henick, CEO of Meow Wolf. “All of it built and maintained by some of the most magical humans on the planet. And the spaces are just the beginning. There’s more coming.”
Meow Wolf’s exhibitions are not museums, not theme parks, not escape rooms. They are walk-through worlds built by hundreds of artists, designed to be explored rather than consumed. Guests don’t observe from a distance; they open doors, crawl through tunnels, pull levers, and stumble into hidden rooms. A refrigerator might be a portal, a convenience store might contain a conspiracy, and a living room might fold into another dimension entirely.
“This recognition belongs to every artist, every team member, and every community that helped build something truly remarkable during a pivotal chapter in Meow Wolf’s story,” said Rebecca Campbell, Meow Wolf’s board member and interim CEO for the past year.
Central to the company’s influence is its artist-led model. Meow Wolf employs 116 in-house artists and has collaborated with more than 1,000 contributing artists across its five exhibitions, including visual artists, video artists, audio contributors, game designers, and writers. Each exhibition is designed to feel unmistakably Meow Wolf and unmistakably of the city where it is built, with artists trusted to develop work in their own voice within a larger shared vision.
“We trust artists. We build systems that trust artists,” said Han Santana Sayles, Senior Director of Artist Collaboration, Meow Wolf. “We are creating a space where artists are valued in society by platforming both emerging and established local artists in every city where we build. When artists are trusted to build worlds of their own design, imagination flourishes and audiences are transformed.”
The past 12 months have marked a period of significant growth. Meow Wolf completed a new financing round in late 2025 to fund continued investment in its existing exhibitions and the development of its Los Angeles and New York locations. The company announced a partnership with Niantic Spatial to explore how augmented reality could extend Meow Wolf’s universe into the everyday world through location-based AR. Its tabletop roleplaying game, TAVERS: The Meow Wolf Roleplaying Game (produced in partnership with Exalted Funeral), tripled its Kickstarter goal and raised roughly $250,000, ranking among the top tabletop campaigns of the year.
“This recognition is an incredible testament to the brilliance and hard work of our entire team,” said Vince Kadlubek, Co-Founder and Chief Vision Officer. “Not only has Meow Wolf been pioneering profound, monumental art and story in an immersive format, but we are also building an entire transmedia universe that audiences have been dreaming about for decades. And in true Meow Wolf fashion, we are psyched to attempt something the world has never seen.”
Meow Wolf has also continued to earn recognition across the entertainment and design landscape: Fast Company named it one of the World’s Most Innovative Companies (No. 1 in Live Events, with repeat appearances in 2020, 2022, and 2024), IAAPA awarded it Best Location-Based Experience in the World (2025), Time Out ranked it the No. 1 Immersive Experience in the US (2023), and its individual locations have collected honors from the Webby Awards, Blooloop Innovation Awards, TEA Thea Awards, and numerous regional outlets.
“Whether you’re counting back 5 years 10 years or 18, one of the only constants at Meow Wolf is change,” said Caity Kennedy, Co-Founder at Meow Wolf. “We’ve found some undeniable truths and some staggering challenges along the way, so we keep adapting as we seek better ways to do the crazy things we do. May we never cease to learn and change! Our challenge to ourselves is to build evermore beautiful things in evermore beautiful ways—together.”
As the first certified B Corporation in themed entertainment, Meow Wolf has built its business to balance creative integrity, public benefit, and growth: millions of dollars donated to local arts nonprofits, thousands of free community tickets distributed each year, and more than $600,000 awarded through the Meow Wolf Foundation. Every Meow Wolf location has earned certification as an IBCCES Autism Center. Later this year, the company opens its sixth exhibition in Los Angeles, inside a cinema, at a moment when the meaning of shared spectacle is being renegotiated. A seventh exhibition in New York is planned for early 2028.
“Creating wonder turns out to be a serious driver of travel and tourism,” said Christopher Sobecki, Chair of the Board, Meow Wolf. “The experience economy is rewriting the rules, and Meow Wolf has been ahead of that curve since day one. To be named one of the most influential companies in travel and tourism, with Los Angeles and New York on the horizon, is a proud moment for this team.” Meow Wolf has never been easy to explain, and that might be the point. As installation artist Olivia Brown told Fast Company: “I want people to cry when they get close enough and see that someone’s hands actually made this.” That spirit is at the center of a company that has proven you can scale radical artistic collaboration, draw millions of people into handmade worlds, become a genuine economic engine for cities, and still keep a refrigerator portal at the center of it all.