The world’s 10 best immersive art experiences

This has to be at the top of the list. Ultimately, this is the immersive space where all of these incredible immersive attractions on this list come from, it is where Art comes from, it is where all of creation comes from.

It may seem like a cheeky cop-out, but far too often in our culture we are programmed to idolise and consume the creative work of others and never stop to imagine the brilliant things we can dream up ourselves. We will click on a top ten list like this, hungry to consume whatever media tells us we should consume. But is within our own dreams, and the effort to bring those dreams to life, that bring us the fulfilment we are truly seeking.

Plus, the imagination is free! No admission price. It’s always open and you don’t have to travel anywhere to visit it.

Before you continue on this list, take a moment to remember that you are a powerful vessel of the imagination, graced with the ability to conjure up magical creations in this world. Make stuff, don’t just consume it, and trust yourself as you take a courageous step into this exhilarating and beautiful realm of the unknown.

Sure, as a founder and director of Meow Wolf, I certainly carry a lot of bias here. But when trying my best to be objective, I still place Meow Wolf’s projects as the cream of the crop of immersive experiences.

Ranking them, though, is nearly impossible – like picking your favourite kid. I have my own personal tastes, but each exhibit is unique unto itself and truly world class on their own basis. For that reason, I have chosen to clump them all together at the top of my list.

House of Eternal Return, Santa Fe

In a lot of ways, Meow Wolf’s House of Eternal Return is the real watershed moment in the history of immersive attractions, when the worlds of entertainment, media, themed entertainment, and Art took notice of just how powerful (and lucrative) the immersive medium could be.

And as captured in the documentary Meow Wolf Origin Story, House of Eternal Return also proved to an entire generation of artists that sustainable and generative success could come from the DIY art world, even without an immediate access to resources.

But putting the cultural impact of this project aside, the work itself stands as a true achievement. Iconic moments like The Glow Forest, Fancy Town Music Venue, The Laser Harp, and Future Fantasy Delight provide a visceral window into the passion, innovation, and ingenuity that artists can bring to the world.

Omega Mart, Las Vegas

The faux-but-real grocery store at AREA15 in Las Vegas is an achievement beyond anything that has been attempted in the world of immersive, balancing storytelling, stunning artwork, and world-class sound that can only be experienced in-person to truly understand.

The grocery store itself is a masterpiece in-and-of-itself. But once you venture beyond one of the many portals, you find moments of rare artistic achievement.

Claudia Bueno’s “Pulse” (pictured) is the standout, an elegant room that elevates Meow Wolf into a new artistic eschalon. The Projected Desert is maybe the greatest projection-mapped environment in the world, Carey Thompson’s “Juke Temple” is a psychedelic accomplishment, and Matt Moldover’s “Music Mill” is a nearly perfect interactive synthesizer experience.

But the real revelation is the sound design, with contributions from folks like Beach House, Brian Eno, Amon Tobin, El Buho, and many others.

Omega Mart sets a new gold standard for how audio should be experienced within immersive spaces.

Convergence Station, Denver

The newest creation by Meow Wolf is also its most ambitious. Convergence Station is housed in a building in downtown Denver that itself is awe-inspiring, an odd pizza slice-shaped structure that rises above an intersection of highways and off-ramps.

Epic sci-fi fantasy environments like Eemia and Numina are breathtaking in their scope and vision, proving that Meow Wolf deserves to be in the same class of attraction-creators as Disney and Universal. The layout is staggering, with multiple floors and endless hallways that are impossible to map even after consecutive visits.

Global sound design, vast lore, and incredible monumental sculpture makes Convergence Station a truly unprecedented immersive experience.

St. Louis is home to the forefather of the immersive industry, an experience that is unprecedented, impossible to replicate, and the reason why immersive attractions exist to begin with. They cracked the code, and they did so 25 years ago, becoming a beacon of inspiration to groups like Meow Wolf who wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for their incredible creation.

The City Museum is a 600,000 sq. ft (yes, you read that right) experience in downtown St. Louis created in 1997 by the late Bob Cassilly and his then-wife Gail Cassilly. The experience is a monumental sculpture that doubles as a massive playground, utilising the multiple floors to create a jungle-gym on steroids (and acid) that is nothing short of a dream-come-true for kids of all ages.

City Museum never asked for permission to exist. Cassily sought forgiveness from the City of St. Louis after it had already become a public icon in the city. Code issues abound at City Museum, which is another reason why the experience is so jaw-dropping. It is DIY, it seems dangerous (even though it is not), and it’s the type of project that could only exist by getting grandfathered in.

A discreet and mysterious door in the Culver City neighbourhood of Los Angeles welcomes visitors into one of the most pristine and mind-altering experiences on this planet. The Museum of Jurassic Technology is a constant contradiction, blending reality and fiction through its endless exhibitions displayed with magical precision.

The MJT is staged as a traditional archive that navigates a time in history where museums, curio exhibitions, and occult lore all shared the same space in the human experience.

With that, there is a lot of fact to be found here, and a lot of truly impressive collections (see: Hagop Sandaldjian’s Needle Eye Microminiatures, or Henry Dalton’s intricate images constructed by clippings of butterfly wings), but weaved throughout are boggling moments of pseudo-fact that make you question your entire makeup of reality.

The legend of Third Rail’s Then She Fell was already at peak prior to COVID, an immersive theatre experience in Brooklyn that was sold out months in advance and seen as the gold standard of the genre. Sadly, Then She Fell closed its doors permanently once the pandemic hit.

You may be wondering why a shuttered experience is on this list. Well, it is because I hold out hope that someday this production will be brought back to life. It is that good.

The production placed 12 guests inside a psychiatric hospital alongside Lewis Carrol, a patient struggling with delusions of white rabbits and obsessed with a girl named Alice. Through dance primarily, the production weaved guests through multiple iconic vignettes that still stands today as an “experience design bible” for the immersive theatre world.

By far my favourite telling of Alice, and by far my favourite immersive theatre experience. Please, someone, bring back Then She Fell! It deserves to live!”

To be honest, I have not traveled internationally much at all and so my experience with immersive attractions is heavily oriented towards The United States. I have yet to travel to Japan, or China, or much of Europe. But one place I have had the pleasure of visiting is Singapore, and holy shit, what an experience it was!

My favourite attraction from my trip to Singapore has to be Cloud Forest, an incredible indoor vertical biopark built around a traversable 138-ft tall mountain, complete with a 115-ft tall waterfall, dozens of flora species, indoor cloud effects, and explorable caves.

Cloud Forest is on the Gardens by the Bay campus, which is home to multiple world-class projects. But the scale and beauty of Cloud Forest towers above everything else I experienced in Singapore.

teamLab is the gold standard in our industry when it comes to light-based experiences. Their work has inspired an entire generation of creators, Meow Wolf included, which has essentially led to the immense success of touring digital exhibits like Van Gogh.

I have yet to have the opportunity to visit teamLab’s work in Tokyo, it is top of my bucket list at this point, but I did have a chance to visit their exhibition at ArtScience Museum in Singapore.

It was an incredible experience overall, but the Crystal Universe exhibit stole the show. Strands of addressable LED lights surround individuals and reflect off infinity mirrors, creating the sensation of strolling through the cosmos. Yes, it is as magical in-person as the pictures make it seem.

In the world of immersive theatre, there is one production that has pushed the boundaries of scale like no other. Sleep No More at The McKittrick Hotel in Manhattan, New York, hosts up to 500 attendees at any given moment, using dance to express the story of Shakespeare’s Macbeth across 5 gigantic floors of open-world, theatrical space.

Sleep No More is brilliant, mysterious, and captivating. The sets are incredible, the performances are striking, and the sheer ambition makes the project a shining example of how immersive theatre can also be a giant business success.

The crowds are both an exhilarating aspect of the experience, but also a compromising aspect. Elements of surprise and delight get somewhat diluted by the feeling of being lost in the mob.

So instead, I explored the incredible world of Sleep No More by moving in the exact opposite directions of the crowd, and what I found was true magic. Intimate performances and secret rooms were staged for the black sheep that wandered against the grain.

The future of immersive attractions will be integrated with AR systems, I am convinced. I am not crazy about “the metaverse” by itself, virtual worlds will always fall just a little bit short when it comes to the value of an experience. But when that virtual world can seamlessly interact with physical worlds, that is when my eyes light up.

There is really only one group in the world currently presenting such an attraction. The Unreal Garden 2.0 in San Francisco is a courageous attempt at showcasing the AR future that everyone dreams about.

They are early in their thinking, and the attraction is still very much a prototype, yet the experience delivers an impressive view of explorable, digital art using Microsoft’s impressive Hololens 2 headset and designed by some of the dopest digital artists in the world.

AREA15 opened in 2020 off I-15 in Las Vegas and instantly became a mecca of the immersive industry. Not only is AREA15 home to multiple immersive experiences like Meow Wolf’s Omega Mart, Wink World, and Lost Spirits, but the location itself is a brilliant immersive space on its own.

Winston Fisher and Michael Benneville are the masterminds behind the project, The Tree of Ténéré is a stunning, glowing sculpture at the center of the “mall” and it is surrounded by Burning Man artwork that personifies the immersive movement.

AREA15 lands on this list not only because of the experience itself, but because what its existence means to the entire industry. For the first time ever, immersive art has a core support structure that is willing to bet big on emerging concepts, which means the future of immersive is brighter than ever.