Extreme. Authentic. Creativity.
Those are the three words Meow Wolf’s CEO Jose Tolosa used to describe the Santa Fe-based arts and entertainment company.
A former Viacom and ViacomCBS veteran, Tolosa was named to the top spot at Meow Wolf in January. Prior to that, he helped lead the Viacom and CBS merger and most recently held the title of chief transformation officer for ViacomCBS.
Now in his role with Meow Wolf, the word “transformation” might not totally capture what he has in mind for the immersive arts company. “Transcendental” might be more appropriate.
He wants to create an entire Meow Wolf universe. A physical world as well as one that exists in augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR). Some might call where they are headed the metaverse, but Tolosa isn’t super hung up on the terminology.
“Sculptural, audio, video, AR, VR — these are all things that I would expect the Meow Wolf universe to manifest itself,” he said. “If at some point our creativity takes us to a place where somebody outside of a Meow Wolf physical exhibition can interact in a seamless way with somebody inside an exhibition, then maybe that is one of the definitions that people today use for the metaverse. If they want to classify it as that, then that’s fine. But we are focused on building [the] Meow Wolf universe.”
Prior to being approached about the CEO position, Tolosa said he had never been to one of Meow Wolf’s three locations (Santa Fe, Denver and Las Vegas), but through the recruitment and hiring process, he visited all of them.
Tolosa said he was “blown away” by what he experienced.
The Meow Wolf team is now looking to take its signature experience to new locations. They recently announced plans for an exhibition in Houston and one in the Dallas suburb of Grapevine, Texas. Grapevine is set to open in 2023 with Houston to follow the next year.
While Tolosa doesn’t live in New Mexico — he and his family are based in New York — he said he has already spent a significant amount of time in Santa Fe and will spend as much time as needed in The City Different. But as Meow Wolf’s footprint continues to grow, and its focus on digital is realized, physical locales will become just one piece of the overall Meow Wolf ecosystem.
Albuquerque Business First recently caught up with Tolosa to talk about his first few months as CEO and what’s next for Meow Wolf.
Albuquerque Business First: What have been your main focuses these first few months?
Jose Tolosa: I spent the first 90 days just talking to as many employees as I could, learning from those employees and really immersing myself in the culture. … That is ultimately what drives the creativity. We need to make sure there is an environment, a culture of the company, that fosters creativity. Without it we are nothing. We are not Meow Wolf. There is a lot of work and a lot of focus on ensuring that we have a very strong creative culture. … We have expansion plans throughout the U.S. There is a lot of territory to cover, so we’ve also been thinking about that. … Technology has a place and a purpose inside our exhibitions, but technology will also enable us to take our intellectual property outside of the exhibitions. … The Meow Wolf universe will have an expression in physical form, and it will have an expression in digital form. Hopefully, they will be connected, as well.
Do you want to be in every major U.S. city? Do you want to go international? They are not mutually exclusive. There is a lot of territory to cover. We need to focus very strategically on how the Meow Wolf universe will be best expressed in the U.S. I really don’t know at this point. [It's] too early to say where are all the markets we should see a Meow Wolf. We are not going to be as present as Starbucks is, for example, and we are not going to remain with the current five [locations] we have laid out. … I do believe along those same lines, there’s a purpose for the Meow Wolf universe to expand internationally and similarly for Meow Wolf fans, international fans, to contribute back to the Meow Wolf universe. I would expect at some point over the coming years to layout an international layer to that physical expansion strategy. When the Meow Wolf universe expresses itself digitally then it is a lot easier to expand, of course. You don’t even need to be in a city where there is a Meow Wolf universe to interact with Meow Wolf.
What boxes are you looking to check — when you look at a location — to make sure you are able to keep what makes Meow Wolf, Meow Wolf? To me, there is a certain size that is required to take the guests through all the experiences that make Meow Wolf, Meow Wolf. … I would envision at some point when we have established a strategy of where we are going with the current physical exhibitions and started down the roadmap of the digital experience, then we might dabble into other types potentially of physical exhibitions. Could we do smaller-size Meow Wolf experiences that are truly Meow Wolf? I would be open to that. But that is not something that we have triggered yet.
Are you still trying to determine what size that is for you all? If you rank them in size, Denver (Convergence Station) is the biggest, then it’s Vegas (Omega Mart), then it’s Santa Fe (House of Eternal Return). I think that probably the size that we would feel comfortable would be a size somewhere in between the size of Vegas and Denver.
You’ve also talked a lot in general terms about this digital expansion. … Is this Meow Wolf Stream or is that something different? It is something different. Meow Wolf Stream certainly has to do with our exhibitions. It is essentially, we are producing things in New Mexico that have to do with our upcoming exhibitions. But all these digital initiatives are not part of the Stream, they are simply other types of work that we are doing. All the other work is also being done in New Mexico, it is just not related to the Stream.
I am going to guess you can’t be any more specific on what this digital stuff is going to look like? It is not going to be surprising. There are technology platforms that enable us to express the same creativity that you might see in physical exhibitions. I think we could expect Meow Wolf's creativity to be represented in platforms that do things like AR or VR or even things that could be accessed inside an application. I don’t think it would be strange to say that we would aspire to have an app. That app would allow us to have incremental functionality through time, and would allow our fans and our guests to continue relating to Meow Wolf before and after they visit an exhibition and to start establishing a relationship. Similarly, I would expect technology to be present inside our exhibitions in a way that we then at some point are able to take those same technologies outside. … Ultimately, the most important thing is that any experience has to be a Meow Wolf created, centered experience. … It is all related, it is all connected and it all has that unique creativity.
The addition of the Meow Wolf Foundation … why was that important for you to formalize? It’s more a question of why not? Being such a mission-driven company with this much purpose and intentionality of creating social impact, the foundation was just a natural extension of that mission. It is almost like our mission would not be complete without a foundation. We have a great leader leading it, Julie Heinrich, and she is very motivated and doing a lot of work already. It hasn’t yet launched … but we are going at it as aggressively as we can. And the foundation will be helping the company have real impact in all of the communities where it does business.
If you and I were to talk again, let’s say a year from now, what do you hope to have accomplished in that timeframe? I would like to have cemented that center of the company, that focuses on the creative elements and on our people. We are doing a lot of work on really identifying our values and making sure we all align on the mission. … I would like to be on the road to opening Grapevine. … I hope to have launched an app by then and defined the frontier of how the different technologies are going to interact with our physical form. I would hope to have announced, I don’t know if we would do this by the middle of next year, but to announce what at least one of our exhibitions is going to be in 2025. And I am telling you this in no particular order. We have posted for a few roles, the biggest one right now is the chief marketing officer, so I would hope to have filled that by now and have a complete management team.
In three words, how would you describe Meow Wolf? Extreme. Authentic. Creativity. … There is really authentic creativity or artistry. That’s at the center. We’ve done it already three times in physical expression. We are going to push the envelope. We are going to roll it out around the U.S., hopefully internationally, and there is a lot more ground to cover with that artistry in other forms.
The interview was edited for brevity and clarity.
