Past Exhibitions

Catherine Opie: 2004 Larry Aldrich Award Exhibition

January 22—May 14, 2006

The 2004 Larry Aldrich Award Exhibition, Catherine Opie: 1999 & In and Around Home, was on view at the Museum from January 22 to May 14, 2006. The exhibition then traveled to the Orange County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, and The Weatherspoon Art Museum at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

In this exhibition, Catherine Opie debuted a new series of intimate and political photographs titled In and Around Home. This new body of work was shown alongside 1999, a series taken while on a road trip across the U.S. at the millennium. Together, the series examine America through landscape and identity—some images are iconic while others portray a much more intimate look at what America means in the home. This body of work is political in nature and represents the American political landscape from the perspective of a gay artist/mother/activist at an important moment in her career. This work is also very personal and gives the viewer a unique opportunity to see both the private world and public world of the artist through the artist's eyes.

Born in Sandusky, Ohio, Catherine Opie received a BFA from San Francisco Art Institute and an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. She is currently a professor of photography at The University of California, Los Angeles, where she lives and works.

additional images | click to enlarge






Opie was the recipient of the 2004 Larry Aldrich Award, which honors an American artist whose work has had a significant impact on contemporary visual culture during the previous three years. Previous recipients of the award, who are selected by an independent panel, include Ann Hamilton (1998), Janine Antoni (1999), Doug Aitken (2000), Mark Dion (2001), Fred Wilson (2002), and David Hammons (2003).

The Aldrich Museum and the Orange County Museum of Art produced a catalogue of the exhibition, which contains every photograph from the two bodies of work-79 images in all, each on its own page. Notable author A.M. Homes (Safety of Objects, Music for Torching) contributed an original piece of short fiction for the catalogue, which also includes interpretive essays by the curators, Elizabeth Armstrong from Orange County Museum of Art, and Jessica Hough from The Aldrich.

Watch videos of Catherine Opie and Jessica Hough being interviewed for the ABC News program The Influentials.
[Apple Quick Time Player required]