West by Midwest

Artists

Catherine Opie

decade

1960s

1961

Catherine Opie is born in Sandusky, Ohio.

decade

1980s

1985

Catherine Opie earns her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute.

1986

Catherine Opie attends CalArts and befriends classmate Richard Hawkins. They briefly become roommates but can’t afford the rent.

1988

Catherine Opie earns her MFA from CalArts.

decade

1990s

1992

Catherine Opie and Andrea Bowers meet at a party at Miles Coolidge’s place—a house out in the country that CalArts students would take over. They discover that they’re from neighboring small towns on Lake Erie and spend the entire night talking about Ohio.

1990s 1994

Catherine Opie is friends with Ron Athey, a performance artist who becomes the subject of her Large-Format Polaroids series. She also participates in some of Athey’s performances.

1996

Mary Kelly begins teaching in the School of Art and Architecture at UCLA, where Rodney McMillian and Catherine Opie are also teaching.

decade

2000s

2000

Catherine Opie, Ron Athey seated smoking, 2000. Color Polaroid; framed: 107 ¼ × 43 ½ in. (272.4 × 110.5 cm). Collection Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, gift of Gary Heiferman, Chip Tom and Michael W. Rabkin, C. Bradford Smith, and Donald L.Davis, in honor of the birth of Oliver Hill Opie; and gift in memory of John S. Baran, 2003.2
Photo: Michael David Rose, © MCA Chicago

2001

Catherine Opie becomes a professor of photography in the Art Department at UCLA.

2004

Catherine Opie, Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer (Lake Michigan), 2004–5. Chromogenic development prints; 4 prints, each: 49 ¼ × 39 ¼ in. (125.1 × 99.7 cm); framed: 51 × 41 × 2 in. (129.5 × 104.1 × 5.1 cm). Collection Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Joseph and Jory Shapiro Fund by exchange, 2006.1.a–d
Photo: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago

2008

Andrea Bowers and Catherine Opie produce the book Between Artists.

decade

2010s

2016

Catherine Opie has a solo exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art titled Catherine Opie: O.

2016

Catherine Opie has a solo exhibition at the MOCA Pacific Design Center titled 700 Nimes Road, which travels to the University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor.

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