Baron Von Opperbean comes from the mind of Christopher Reyes. Reyes has been involved in Memphis’ creative scene since graduating from the Memphis College of Art in 1993.

Reyes’ latest project brings the Baron and his multiverse to the 33,000-square-foot former Mississippi River Museum on Mud Island near Downtown Memphis. The prominent building has been vacant since 2019. Baron Von Opperbean and the River of Time opened on May 1, 2026, with visitors navigating a labyrinth of rooms, corridors, and portals merging physical sets, interactive worlds, projection-mapping, and game-engine technology to create a living story to explore, play, and shape. The River of Time transforms the building’s historic architecture–complete with a three-story paddlewheel and two-story ironclad–into a network of re-imagined realms connected through light, sound, sculpture, and narrative design.

“Dr. Who meets Indiana Jones in a Willy Wonka world of magic, science, and the multiverse,” Reyes explains in this promotional video.

Music, film, art, storytelling.

The exploration of an open-world video game with the storytelling of a choose-your-own-adventure book

All the things.

“Where story, art, and adventure collide,” as the project likes to say.

The May 1 opening marked the first 8,000 square feet of the River of Time–an initial chapter within a larger buildout that will expand over the coming phases.

That growth includes:

• an additional 10,000 square feet planned by the end of 2026
• full buildout of the experience, including two large boat environments, targeted for completion in 2027

Looking Backward, Looking Forward, Living Now

“In every great city, art always precedes economic development,” Baron Von Opperbean Chief Executive Officer Jee Vahn Knight said in a press release when she was hired in October 2025. “What’s happening here isn’t a recovery story—it’s a creative one. The energy, the collaboration, the sheer will to build something new—that’s the real engine of Memphis’s growth. I’m proud to be in the trenches with the people who are shaping what comes next.”

Vahn Knight first visited Memphis in 2018 on an “epic road trip” with her husband and kids from Santa Fe to Cleveland by way of St. Louis, Memphis, and Chicago.

“While we were in Memphis, the history of the city oozes out of the ground. There's nothing about Memphis that is manufactured,” Vahn Knight told me during a video interview two days before BVO’s opening. “The city left a huge impact on us. We wanted to come back. We wanted to spend more time. The people were real to us. The economic development trajectory, you could tell, was just on the precipice. What if you could join a city before property developers come in and everybody starts price gouging? What if you could join it before that and be part of that rise; that was exciting.”

Vahn Knight had lived, worked, and travelled all over the country. She’d heard the dings about Memphis. Unsafe. Living on and in its history.

It’s a spectacular history.

“There's a fiery culture in this city that is both music and fashion and art and the history of the blues and the history of rock and roll,” Vahn Knight explained. “You're in the Mesopotamia of rock and roll music or American music. All of that legacy is here.”

It’s also a tragic history.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated here in 1968.

Both realities continue drifting through the air like guitar riffs on Beale Street. Too much? Memphis has a mystic making it prone to hyperbole.

Baron Von Opperbean wants to help the city look forward, not back

“You also have second, third generation Memphians that want to push into the future,” Vahn Knight said. “They don't want to sit on the laurels of the past. They want to innovate into what it is next.”

BVO promises to be “what’s next” in Memphis.

Memphians, however, have heard promises before.

“Memphians, from my perspective, are stuck in what I call hope fatigue. They want the next great thing for the city, and they're continually asked by leaders to have hope and have optimism and they want their emotional buy in, and if it doesn't come to fruition, then there's a letdown,” Vahn Knight said. “Breaking through that cycle, once it starts to spark, the city is going to go through a tremendous transformation and potentially let go of some of the burdens it's been carrying.”

One “next big thing” project Memphis was promised that was delivered was Tom Lee Park along the Mississippi River riverfront adjacent to Mud Island. The park was completed in 2023. City officials and designers said it would be as good as any riverfront park in the country and it is.

“It definitely started to move some of the conversation of, ‘what are we doing with the entire riverfront,’ and ‘what is the master plan?’ There is definitely a collective swell around downtown, and having downtown be exactly what people envision: warm and welcoming and full of arts and culture and bright and safe for families and safe for tourists,” Vahn Knight said.

With the opening of Tom Lee Park, BVO taking over Mud Island, and a new riverfront art museum being placed between them set to open this December, now may be a golden age for Memphis.

“We talk a lot on our team about if we can get people out of ‘Memphis was this,’ and ‘Memphis will be this,’ and just focus on ‘Memphis is,’ because there are people that are already doing the work today, and they may not yet be at a threshold that it’s a national story, or it's even a state story, but they are that glorious today,” Vahn Knight explained. “We just keep focusing on what Memphis was and what Memphis will be; if we could let go of that and point towards the people who are doing the work, there's so much to see and there's so much to talk about, and there's so much movement that's happening.”

Lies, Damn Lies, And Memphis

When Memphis Mayor Paul Young was elected in 2023, his administration prioritized using the city’s stacked arts and cultural community and history as an economic driver. Reyes initially had the Mid-South Coliseum in mind for Baron Von Opperbean. Further from downtown. Young encouraged him to think about Mud Island. City owned. Closer to downtown.

“Art is what creates community, and community is what puts value on a piece of property” Vahn Knight said. “Until you have value on that piece of property, you don't have the economic development that comes from that piece of property that brings more businesses, that brings more wealth and more people. Whether you call that culture or a vibe, or kind of a scene, it's still an expression of creativity, and art that creates value for a location then generates and continues to spark all of these other pieces of economic development.”

Memphis has vibe for days. Memphis has soul and authenticity that couldn’t possibly be manufactured. Memphis is cool. The city has had that plus world-class art and culture for over 100 years, but none of it has resulted in widespread economic uplift.

Memphis has the ingredients without the finished product.

Is the recipe finally starting to come together?

Not everyone wants to see that happen.

In September of 2025, with the blessing of Tennessee’s Nashville-based governor, the federal government invaded Memphis with 2,000 National Guard troops under the guise of combating crime. The city didn’t want them. The Black-majority city was overruled.

“They're around,” Vahn Knight said of the lingering National Guard presence. “I don't see them very often in my day to day, though, I don't not see them. The national narrative around Memphis is easy and digestible to put out on national news for people who don't actually visit the city.”

That narrative is “Black-majority city run amuck in crime.” The same lies right wing media outlets spread about other cities they’re hoping fail like Detroit and Chicago.

“People continue to be surprised when I say the city is no less safe than every other city that I've lived,” Vahn Knight said. “There are areas in every city that are safe or not safe depending on who you are and your familiarity with them. That's not unique to Memphis. I don't feel unsafe here. I moved my three children here. We lived downtown for the first two years before we moved closer to their school. The national narrative about Memphis is incredibly superficial and lacking in the humanity of what is actually happening in the city.”

Mid-South Meow Wolf

Meow Wolf is the face that launched a thousand interactive art environment attractions. Attractions like Baron Von Opperbean and the River of Time.

Meow Wolf debuted in 2016. A collective of artsy outsiders in Santa Fe, NM had the idea of creating a multimedia immersive playground built around a fantastical storyline of an alternate reality existing through a refrigerator.

The project took off like a rocket. It has become a billion-dollar company. Four more Meow Wolf’s have opened around the country with additional locations in the pipeline.

Countless other “tribute” venues have tried capturing the Meow Wolf magic elsewhere, including in Memphis. BVO follows the success of Quadrant 360 (2020), a 2-month immersive installation by Reyes that sold out with over 4,000 visitors.

Vahn Knight came to Memphis from Santa Fe where she worked her way up the Meow Wolf corporate ladder.

Can BVO replicate Meow Wolf’s success?

“(Memphis gets) 12 million tourists annually, but the number of attractions that you can go to is on one hand, so there's a huge amount of opportunity before the tourism industry starts to cannibalize itself,” Vahn Knight said. “You take the power of what Meow Wolf could do in sparking inspiration across a wide swath of people and ages, and then you also put it in a place that is underserved for those things and is starving for some innovation. It feels like a perfect storm. We're gonna find out.”

The Balcony Is Still There

Room 306 of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis is preserved exactly as it was 58 years ago. The wreath still hangs on the balcony railing. The ashtray is still on the nightstand.

For 35 years, the National Civil Rights Museum has been built around that room outside of which Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. For 35 years, millions of people have made a pilgrimage to stand in that spot and reckon with it.

On May 16, the Museum reopens its Legacy Experience, a newly expanded wing taking on the harder question: what came after? From the Poor People's Campaign to Black Lives Matter, from the 1968 sanitation strike to today's fights over economic inequality and democratic participation, the exhibition traces the unfinished arc of a movement that didn't end with an assassination, it transformed.

The reopening anchors the Museum’s Legacy Year, commemorating its 35th anniversary as a global destination for truth, dialogue, and action.

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