The Artist Behind Meow Wolf’s Beloved Fantastical Space Owl Is Suing the Company for More Than $1 Million

One of the artists behind the wildly popular Santa Fe art
space run by the art production company Meow
Wolf has filed a lawsuit against the corporation for
allegedly violating her copyright.

Lauren Adele Oliver claims that her piece, Space
Owl, helped Meow Wolf become a multi-million dollar
enterprise, but that she hasn’t been properly credited or
remunerated. In her lawsuit, she says the company pressured her by
offering her two options: selling the rights to the character for a
pittance, or taking it out of the exhibition without any additional
payment.

Oliver just wants to be “compensated fairly,” her lawyer, Jesse
A. Boyd, told the Santa Fe New
Mexican. She is seeking more than $1 million.

Oliver made her first sketches of Space Owl in
2006, and created a seven-foot sculpture of the design for a
gallery show in Santa Fe. Representatives from Meow Wolf, who
allegedly first saw the work there, asked Oliver to include it
in House of Eternal Return, their Santa Fe space,
and Oliver agreed.

Oliver says she and other artists were told they now were part
of the Meow Wolf collective, and that if House of Eternal Return
became profitable, they would get an “artist revenue share.”

The exhibition opened in 2016 and quickly became a huge hit, and
Oliver believes her prominently displayed artwork was an important
component of that success.

“The Space Owl put a friendly face on this new, weird,
sometimes intimidating art experiment,” the lawsuit says, and
became “a highly recognizable, iconic element of the exhibit.”

(The complaint also cites Artnet News’s list of the 100 defining works of the
decade, which uses an image of Space Owl to
illustrate House of Eternal Return, ranked at number 25.)

Oliver alleges that the revenue-sharing system was later renamed
a “bonus program,” and that she became especially concerned about
her lack of a formal agreement with Meow Wolf after Space
Owl was featured in coloring books and other merchandise.

When Oliver raised her concerns in 2018, Meow Wolf allegedly
offered a royalty-free licensing agreement to use the work, which
she says she rejected. After she asked the company not to
use Space Owl from promotional purposes until an
agreement was in place, she learned it was prominently
featured in the trailer for Meow Wolf’s self-made documentary.

Last June, Oliver met with Meow Wolf cofounder and chief
executive Vince Kadlubek, who she says gave her the choice of a
“nominal” one-time payment to keep Space Owl on
display, or for the work to be removed from display with no
additional compensation.

Oliver says she has only been received $2,000 for her work,
which is less than she claims it cost to produce and install the
piece. Meow Wolf, meanwhile, raised $158 million to expand
its footprint across the US last year.

A spokesperson for Meow Wolf told Artnet News that the company
is “disappointed by these baseless allegations.”

“Meow Wolf is committed to supporting artists and providing fair
treatment to every person we collaborate with. These claims run
completely counter to our culture and we will vigorously defend
against them through the legal process.”

The post The Artist Behind Meow Wolf’s Beloved Fantastical
Space Owl Is Suing the Company for More Than $1 Million
appeared first on artnet News.