SAN JOSE, California (October 22, 2010)--Acclaimed photographer Catherine Opie will speak at the San Jose Museum of Art on Saturday, November 6, at 1 p.m. The talk is part of SJMA’s ongoing series, “Creative Minds.” Opie’s photograph Melissa and Lake, Durham, North Carolina (1998), is currently on view in the exhibition Degrees of Separation: Contemporary Photography from the Permanent Collection. Tickets are $10 ($6 for Museum members). Advance purchase is recommended. Tickets are available at www.artsopolis.com.
Opie, whose work was the subject of a major retrospective at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art this fall, describes herself as “a kind of twisted social documentary photographer.” She is known for her portraits of people in the LGBT community, surfers, and, most recently, high school football players. Opie is currently a professor of photography at the University of California, Los Angeles, and holds a master’s degree from California Institute of the Arts School of Art, Valencia. She has won numerous awards including the 2003 CalArts Alpert Award in the Arts, the 2004 Larry Aldrich Award, the San Francisco Art Institute President’s Award for Excellence, and the 2006 United States Artist Fellowship. Her work is in the collections of numerous major museums including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Guggenheim Museum, New York, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Opie’s Melissa and Lake, Durham, North Carolina (1998), a recent addition to the San Jose Museum of Art’s collection, is from her “Domestics” series. The artist made this series of portraits of same-sex domestic partners while on a cross-country road trip. It is on view in Degrees of Separation through March 13, 2011, along with works by Carlee Fernandez, Chris Jordan, Sebastiao Salgado, and others.
SAN JOSE MUSEUM OF ART
The San Jose Museum of Art is located at 110 South Market Street in downtown San Jose. The Museum is open Tuesday through Sunday, 11am to 5 pm. For more information call 408-271-2787 or visit www.SanJoseMuseumofArt.org.
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Programs at the San Jose Museum of Art are generously supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts, by operating support from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation; the James Irvine Foundation; the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation; the Adobe Foundation; and the Koret Foundation; the MetLife Foundation; and a Cultural Affairs grant from the City of San Jose.