Catherine Opie appointed chair of the UCLA Department of Art
World-renowned photographer and UCLA Lynda and Stewart Resnick Endowed Chair in Art, Catherine Opie, has been appointed departmental chair of the UCLA Department of Art, beginning September 1st. Opie’s appointment comes after nearly four years of service by artist and professor Andrea Fraser.
“It is a huge honor to assume the role of chair for the Department of Art and to continue working alongside the amazing UCLA Arts community,” Opie said. “I have been associated with the department for 25 years – 20 of those as a tenured faculty member – and I cannot imagine a more critical or optimistic time to be leading the department forward.”
Opie joined the UCLA Department of Art faculty in 2001. One of the preeminent artists of her generation, Opie is known for her evocative images documenting the cultural and geographic identity of contemporary America. Throughout her 40-year career, she has chosen a myriad of subjects including high school football players, S/M enthusiasts, modern architecture and cityscapes, surfers, swamps, families, domestic life, and President Obama’s first inauguration. Her work has been featured in hundreds of major museum and gallery exhibitions and is included in more than 60 public collections around the world.
I cannot imagine a more critical or optimistic time to be leading the department forward.
Catherine Opie
At UCLA, Opie teaches graduate and undergraduate students in photography. In 2019, Opie was named the inaugural holder of the Lynda and Stewart Resnick Endowed Chair in Art, the first endowed professorship for the art department, established with a $2 million gift from philanthropists and entrepreneurs Lynda and Stewart Resnick. In addition to funding the chair, the Resnicks made a $500,000 gift to renovate and upgrade the undergraduate photography suite, renamed the Lynda and Stewart Resnick Photography Lab. Opie, who leads the photography program for the department, will continue teaching while concurrently serving as department chair.
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Courtesy of Catherine Opie |
As department chair, Opie will oversee the management of the department, the recruitment of new faculty, the approval of curricula, and will guide the vision and growth of the department. Her goals include securing more endowed chair positions in the department; raising scholarship funds to ensure an arts education is accessible to all students; and working alongside the School of the Arts and Architecture’s academic programs and three renowned public arts units – UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance, the Hammer Museum, and the Fowler Museum – to expand and deepen UCLA’s role and engagement with the broader Los Angeles cultural community, which “will be especially important as we continue to emerge and recover from a devastating pandemic year in which such a broad swath of the arts was shut down in Los Angeles," she said.
The master of fine arts degree at UCLA has been ranked No. 1 by U.S. News & World Report since the publication’s 2020 list of best art schools. UCLA's graduate-level photography program has been ranked No. 2 nationwide.
The UCLA Department of Art’s photography program has been a leader in the field since it was established in 1962 by Robert Heinecken. Influential photographers such as James Welling and Opie have been a vital part of the department ever since. Prominent alumni and former students of Opie include Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Lucas Blalock, Carmen Winant, and Amy Adler, among others.
“Catherine Opie has mentored a generation of photography students while continuing to break boundaries in her field,” said Brett Steele, dean of the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture. “Her images elevate outsider voices and perspectives, causing us to question our own assumptions and beliefs about power and privilege. Her voice and vision are so necessary, now more than ever, and her new role will allow her to inspire an even greater number of students and colleagues.”
Opie was born in Sandusky, OH in 1961 and received her B.F.A. from San Francisco Art Institute and a M.F.A. from California Institute of the Arts.
[Cathy’s] voice and vision are so necessary, now more than ever, and her new role will allow her to inspire an even greater number of students and colleagues.
Brett Steele
Opie’s solo exhibitions include shows at the Guggenheim Museum, New York; Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Norway; ICA Boston; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Henie Onstad Art Centre, Oslo; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus; St. Louis Art Museum; MOCA, Chicago; MOCA, Los Angeles; The Photographers’ Gallery, London; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Portland Art Museum; Regen Projects, Los Angeles; Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong; Galeria Massimo De Carlo, Milan; and Ginza Art Space, Tokyo.
Opie’s publications include: Catherine Opie, Phaidon (2021); Keeping an Eye on the World, Henie Onstad Kunstsenter (2017); 700 Nimes Road, Prestel (2015); Empty and Full, Hatje Cantz (2011); Inauguration, Gregory Miller & Co. (2011); Catherine Opie: American Photographer, Guggenheim Museum (2008); Catherine Opie: 1999/In and Around the Home, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum/Orange County Museum of Art (2006), and Catherine Opie: Skyways and Icehouses, Walker Art Center (2002).
In recognition of her distinctive work, Opie received The Guggenheim Fellowship in 2019, The Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art Medal in 2016, The Julius Shulman Excellence in Photography Award in 2013, a United States Artists Fellowship in 2006, and The Herb Alpert Award in the Arts in 2003.
Opie serves on the board of directors of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts, and on the board of trustees of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. She was on the first Artist Council of the Hammer Museum.
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