Imagination station

Wildly popular Santa Fe immersive arts venture Meow Wolf to open new Grapevine 'portal'

Texans will soon be able to immerse themselves in the imaginative world of Meow Wolf.

Rendering courtesy of Meow Wolf

The mesmerizing Santa Fe-based interactive adventure known for enchanting art lovers and amusement zealots with its mind-bending immersive experiences is tripping into Texas with a new permanent exhibition in Dallas-Fort Worth: Meow Wolfwill open a new "portal" in Grapevine next year.

Announced Wednesday, May 11, the DFW location marks the innovative business’ first permanent installation in the Lone Star State. A portal in Houston will follow, in 2024.

The new Grapevine portal (so called for Meow Wolf’s expertise in transporting visitors to fantastic realms of imagination) will be located in the Grapevine Mills shopping mall and encompass 40,000 square feet in the space formerly occupied by a big-box store. The Grapevine Meow Wolf is scheduled to open in 2023.

Following the Grapevine opening, Meow Wolf aims to unveil its Houston portal, which will be in the historic Fifth Ward cultural district and include Houston-based real estate firm The Deal Co as development partners. The Houston portal is planned for a 2024 opening.

Meow Wolf got its start in 2008 as a DIY collective of Santa Fe artists, growing into a full-fledged immersive-art affair with the opening of the permanent Santa Fe location in 2016. In 2021, the company branched out with two additional permanent portals in Denver and Las Vegas. Each location hosts a unique art exhibition, ranging from Santa Fe’s mysterious “House of Eternal Return” to Las Vegas’ surreal supermarket-themed “Omega Mart” and Denver’s transformative “Convergence Station.”

While additional info on themes, names, artists, and specific opening dates for the new Texas portals — the company’s fourth and fifth permanent exhibitions — will be released in the coming months, and the company declined to reveal the build-out costs for the new locations, Meow Wolf has confirmed that more than 50 percent of the artists contributing to the rooms, dioramas, and murals at the new Lone Star State portals hail from Texas. Meow Wolf says it will actively begin recruiting more artists and staff for the new Texas portals this summer.

The new locations, which the company teased as part of its appropriately mysterious Texas Portals marketing campaign, are part of a larger expansion plan for the arts consortium, says Didi Bethurum, vice president of marketing for Meow Wolf, which will add more permanent installations and roll out other artful projects in the coming years.

While Bethurum notes that several factors play into the decision-making process when choosing a new Meow Wolf location, she highlights the size and art-loving communities in the Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston areas as key criteria.

“Dallas is the ninth-largest city by population in the United States and Houston is the fourth-largest. Bringing Meow Wolf experiences to large cities allows for us to share art with the greatest amount of people,” she says, also calling attention to the Texas Cultural Trust’s 2021 State of the Arts Report, which claims Texas’ arts and culture industry has blossomed by more than 30 percent in the past decade. “We seek to be part of the amazing growth of this sector.”

And considering Meow Wolf has a “legacy of utilizing unique spaces” that allow for artistic creativity to flow — an old bowling alley in Santa Fe, a new experience district in Las Vegas, and football-stadium-adjacent triangular highway void in Denver — Grapevine’s nostalgic mall vibes and Houston’s diverse and historic location make for ideal haunts for Meow Wolf.

Likely also contributing to the Grapevine location decision is the fact that one of Meow Wolf’s founders, Matt King, grew up in the area and was even present at the grand opening of Grapevine Mills in the late 1990s.

“I am thrilled to welcome Meow Wolf to Grapevine,” says Mayor William D. Tate. “Our city is a premier destination for entertainment, and the interactive installation these artists will build at Grapevine Mills pairs perfectly with the high-quality restaurants, wineries, and family-friendly activities we have worked to place all over our fine city for decades.”

This marks the first time Meow Wolf will open two exhibitions in the same state at roughly the same time, certainly a major undertaking for any arts organization. But given that some 3 million raving fans have already visited Meow Wolf locations and that the company has been eyeing these Texas markets for more than two years, the new portals are destined to become a howling success, enthralling locals with “revolutionary artistic expression” unlike anything Grapevine or Houston have previously experienced.

“The Meow Wolf story universe is expanding, and Texas holds the keys to our next chapters,” says Jose Tolosa, CEO of Meow Wolf. “Opening a permanent exhibition in the largest and one of the most diverse states in the country has been on Meow Wolf’s radar for years, and we are excited to be formally underway. The opportunities this state has presented have already become the touchstones of a vibrant, arts-centric portal of imaginative creativity.”

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Ancient Sculpture News

Fort Worth museum one of only 3 in U.S. to get rare sculpture exhibit

Lorenzo di Masi/Torlonia Collection

The Torlonia Nile

A major exhibition of ancient Roman masterworks is coming to the U.S. for the first time to be viewed at only three museums — including the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth.

Called Myth and Marble: Ancient Roman Sculpture from the Torlonia Collection, it's an assemblage of works stewarded by the Torlonia Family beginning in the early-19th century, and will be installed at the Kimbell from September 14, 2025 – January 25, 2026.

As part of the Foundation’s mission to showcase these historical works to the public, the exhibition will premiere at the Art Institute of Chicago on March 15 through June 29, before traveling to the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth. Its third stop will be at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, from March 14 - July 19, 2026.

The Torlonia Collection was established during the course of the 19th century by the Franco-Italian banker Prince Giovanni Torlonia and his son Alessandro, then handed down over generations, eventually growing into the largest private collection of ancient Roman sculptures.

Today, the Torlonia Foundation represents the culmination of the Family’s continued passion for art. Created at the behest of Prince Alessandro Torlonia (1925–2017), the Foundation’s mission is to preserve and promote the Torlonia Collection and Villa Albani Torlonia.

In 1876, Prince Alessandro Torlonia (1800-1886) created a museum to house and exhibit the Family’s holdings, which was open to small groups until its closure at the onset of World War II. The sculptures remained unseen by the public from that time until the Foundation’s first exhibition at the Musei Capitolini in Rome in 2020. That was followed by a stint at the Louvre, the first presentation of the collection outside of Rome, where it has drawn more than 600,000 visitors to date, an unprecedented feat.

The exhibit
The curators of Myth & Marble: Ancient Roman Sculpture from the Torlonia Collection are Lisa Ayla Çakmak and Katharine A. Raff of the Art Institute of Chicago. The exhibition is co-organized by the Art Institute of Chicago and the Torlonia Foundation, in collaboration with the Kimbell Art Museum, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and The Museum Box. All of the sculptures in the exhibition have been restored by the Foundation with the support of Bvlgari.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue co-published by the Art Institute of Chicago and the Torlonia Foundation, edited by Lisa Ayla Çakmak and Katharine A. Raff, with essays by Silvia Beltrametti and Salvatore Settis.

The North American presentation will feature 58 highlights from the Torlonia Collection, including 24 newly restored works that have not been on view in nearly a century. The sculptures date from approximately the 5th century BCE to the early 4th century CE, with the majority of the works dating to the High Imperial period (1st–2nd centuries CE). Highlights include examples of the most emblematic genres of ancient marble sculpture, acquired by the Torlonia Family from the most prominent collections of Rome’s patrician families, as well as from excavations made on the Family’s own estates throughout Italy.

“The Foundation is excited to be sharing the Torlonia Collection with audiences in North America for the first time. This exceptional group of ancient sculptures is a testament to the enduring cultural legacy of ancient Rome, as well as the vision and passion of multiple generations of the Torlonia Family,” said Alessandro Poma Murialdo, President of the Torlonia Foundation.

The presentation is organized thematically in six sections, featuring sculptures found on the Torlonia Family’s properties in Rome and the surrounding suburbs and their estate in Porto, Portugal, as well as a number of exceptional sarcophagi (stone coffins), among the largest sculpted works in marble to survive from ancient Rome.

The tour reinforces the work of the Foundation to advance the appreciation and understanding of this unparalleled collection and the rich cultural heritage it represents. The Foundation’s mission is carried out through a continuous joint effort between the public and private sectors, including with the cooperation of the Italian Ministry of Culture. The Foundation is supported by a longstanding collaboration with Bvlgari as the principal sponsor of the restoration project since its inception in Rome and throughout the global tour, and Chiomenti, who has lent invaluable support to the Foundation’s core activities.

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