Papery Stalactites and Garbage

Meow Wolf

In the early 70's, I had a friend in Loveland who was a talented commercial photographer.  He was also something of a self-styled sage and philosopher, a middle aged hippy freak.  We had lots of fun conversations in between reading THE WHOLE EARTH CATALOGUE and the collected works of Jack Kerouac.

He developed a theory I still cling to today.  He posited that the only truly beautiful things were isolated pieces of nature that man had not yet despoiled and the garbage that Despoiler Man had thrown away.  To prove his point, he made a slide show alternating little slices of nature (a wildflower growing out of a crack in a rock, a mushroom sprouting at the base of a tree, etc.) with pieces of junk he found in the local dump (an abandoned medicine cabinet with surprising patterns of rust, an old tennis shoe juxtaposed to a pair of crutches, etc.) .  He set the whole thing to "Rocky Raccoon."  It not only proved his point, but it was a delight to watch and hear.

Meow Wolf in Santa Fe celebrates this idea in an interactive "museum" filled with the detritus of our culture.  It is like the creators of this place spent a few years scavenging discarded things out of local junk yards, used book stores, used record stores, basements and attics filled with the accumulated stuff of lives fully spent.  Then they took all this stuff and rearranged it into a series of rooms, corridors, closets, and secret passages by classifying it into as many categories as they could.  There is a room lit in flickering blue and green lights with papery stalactites hanging down around the heads of all the museum goers.  There is also an old dinosaur skeleton in the room and you can play a song on its ribs.  Of course, you really can't because there are dozens of people already playing their dinosaur tunes and refusing to give anyone else a chance.

There is a room in black and white with black tea dripping down the white cups and onto the white table with the black outline.  There is another room that is meant to look like the bedroom of some kid from years gone by.  The room itself is too dark to determine a dominant color, but there is a bookcase against a wall filled with old textbooks.  You know, textbooks are what kids used to use before everything got placed on line.  If they had only asked us, we had enough old textbooks littering our basement that we could have made our own room.  When Meow Wolf starts scavenging Denver for their new installation, they should give us a call.  I have a stack of Big Chiefs that would be perfect.

Kathie posted our trip to Meow Wolf on Facebook and she got dozens of enthusiastic reactions from folks who had been there and loved it and from folks who were desperate to go.  I'm sorry, but I don't share the enthusiasm.

While standing in line to get in with the 10:20 group, people who  had been there before told us that folks spend anywhere from 30 minutes to six hours in the place.  Kathie and I lasted 25 minutes, thereby setting a new record.

I appreciate why so many people want to go.  I see the attraction, but I shared the opinion of a lady standing next to me in the black and white room.  "I just don't get it," she said.

On further reflection, Meow Wolf seems like a combination of a terrific haunted house and an after-prom designed by a group of incredibly creative and resourceful juniors.  If I could have managed to walk through the place in that spirit, it would have been a much more rewarding experience.  If I had my grandchildren with me, it would have been even more terrific.

I guess the thing I'm reacting negatively to is that they call the place an art museum.  Just because something has been collected and displayed doesn't make it art.  I felt the same way about my photographer friend's slide show.  It was clever and well done, but I won't accept the idea that putting garbage in a slide show or in an all black and white room magically turns that garbage into art.

I guess I make a distinction between art and archaeology.  In my classes I used to initiate a discussion about Art with a capital A by taking an old hammer and pounding three nails into my classroom wall.  Then I would take the hammer, place it at a slant on two of the nails and from the third I hung an old frame. The transformation of the hammer from a tool  to a piece of art in that scenario is a little startling to anyone open to the experience.  And, if I say so myself, it was a clever way to get a conversation started, but I don't think an entire building filled with those kinds of "framed hammers" constitutes a museum that anyone past puberty really needs to see.

I'm glad I went to Meow Wolf.  When one opens in Denver next year, I'll take my grandchildren.  But for myself, if I want to see art I'll go to DAM.  There are no backlit, papery stalactites there to get in my hair.