Artopia, opened last month in West Town, is that new kind of arty entertainment destination that doesn’t fit well in existing categories. Is it a pop-up museum? A lounge or nightclub?
Housed inside the 32,000-square-foot Morgan Manufacturing building on Morgan Street, Artopia bills itself as an “immersive art experience” that lets visitors walk through different art installations and light sculptures, headlined by work done by Chicago street artists and all set to music. Artopia is open for all ages but at the end of the roughly 60-minute tour there’s a lounge area with cocktails for upgraded adult ticket holders.
“Originally our demographic was 20- to 40-year-olds, young professionals and music festival enthusiasts,” said co-creator John Schroeder. “We’ve been pleasantly surprised, we’re getting older couples in their 60s, families with kids. It’s been fun to watch the kids go through, playing with the projection wall. They get inspired, you can see it right in front of your face.”
The tour is partitioned into three different areas plus the lounge. All of the artwork is by Chicagoans with the exception of an LED tunnel by Datagrama Visuals.
Among the street art credits: Paintings and an earlier demo by the Chicago shop Slangism; work by muralist Jeff Zimmerman who recently did the oversized take on Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe on Michigan Avenue; plus work by Don Gratzke aka Don.Mega and Brian Keller aka Brain Killer.
“We think immersive art experiences are going to be a big thing going forward,” Schroeder said. He and business partner Dominque Brown started Superfrüit LLC, coming from a background of music promotion and special events. Schroeder’s company SynerGeo also was in the news last winter
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for creating some of the geodesic dome environments used by Chicago bars and restaurants.As far as categories go, the obvious comparisons for Artopia are the smartphone-friendly operations like WNDR Museum, where people go to take photos and selfies in various arty environments. But Schroeder resists the comparison.
“We’ve obviously seen the other experiences and we wanted this to be different,” he said. “We called them Instagram traps, you get there and really it’s created just for that Instagram shot. Our goal here is to get people to forget about their phones.”
Not that people do. But he’ll take the social media marketing too.
Artopia recently reopened after a refresh of exhibits and likely will extend through mid-July, with the plan then to take it on the road, next to Miami. Future iterations will again use local artists from those cities. Superfrüit has plans for a next art space in a high-profile Chicago location it can’t yet name, slated for October.
In the meantime, Artopia has been selling well, he said. “We’re sold out most weekends.”
This story has been updated.
Open 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays, 1 p.m. to 9 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays, timed entries every 30 minutes; Morgan Manufacturing, 401 N. Morgan St.; tickets $30-$70 at artopiaexperience.com
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