Last summer, 69,493 people went out into the desert to build a city. They brought with them supplies not only for erecting a temporary infrastructure (tents and RVs, roads, signage, bathrooms), but also for printing newspapers, issuing vehicle licenses, making art, throwing parties, burning a giant sculpture of a man, and eating and staying hydrated for nine days in a place where coffee and ice are two of the only items for sale, and the nearest convenience store is about 22 miles away, in a depopulated former mining town. Between August 27 and September 4, those tens of thousands of people took part in the annual ritual of creating and maintaining Black Rock City, the home of Burning Man.

While living in the middle of an inhospitable desert, each year the attendees, who are often called “Burners,” adhere to a set of ten vaguely utopian principles, including “gifting,” “radical self-expression,” “decommodification,” and “leaving no trace.” They inhabit themed camps and wear whatever they want, from homemade costumes to no clothing at all. They ditch their given names in favor of special ones reserved for use on the playa, the federally owned stretch of dry lake bed on which the festival takes place.

They set out to create, in other words, an alternative society—one removed from the mainstream in both its location and its norms. “Uniting every divergent tendency, spirituality, and attitude at Burning Man,” Brian Doherty writes in his 2004 book, This Is Burning Man, “is a sense that every life is missing something: a spark of creativity, a chance for self-expression, some freedom from judgment and cold personal relations that one must travel far off the grid to find.” For just over a week, the festival and its attendees aspire to that freedom. Then they clean up and pack up their things and return the desert to its state of vast emptiness, as if Black Rock City and all it contained had been a mirage. It is, according to Doherty, both a “true experiment in intentional creative community” and “the hippest party around.”

In recent years, the second sentiment has seemed to prevail—not just because Burning Man is famous for its raves, but also because people are paying more and more to get in. Ticket prices now range from $190 up to $1,200, making it perhaps the consummate capitalistic countercultural happening of our time. The festival (which organizers confusingly insist is not a festival but a “global cultural movement”) has suffered from a perception that it’s a utopian playground for privileged white people. This hasn’t been helped by the increasing presence of Silicon Valley millionaires and billionaires, who’ve taken to buying up large quantities of tickets, hiring workers to build and maintain their camps, and generally disregarding the egalitarian (if also libertarian) spirit of the ten principles.

Burning Man is now a nonprofit, whose net assets in 2016 amounted to $19.9 million, and a museum-worthy phenomenon, with an exhibition of sculptures, installations, costumes, photographs, and more creations from the festival at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., this summer. Being featured in a national institution just up the block from the White House might seem to jar with the festival’s promise of circumventing the establishment. To be sure, it presents an opportunity to spread the gospel of Burning Man, to win over a wider public to the culture of the festival and its particular visions of transcendence. But it’s also a test of how those visions fare out in the permanent, imperfect real world. A weeklong utopia is a wonderful thing, if you can get there. For those who can’t, what does Burning Man have to give?