GREENSBORO, NC.- The Weatherspoon Art Museum at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro presents the exhibition, Catherine Opie: 1999 and In & Around Home. Since the prominent debut of her classically composed images capturing Los Angeles' gay subculture in 1994, Catherine Opie has explored the rich terrain of cultural portraiture and the documentary tradition in America. The Weatherspoon is proud to present two of Opie's photographic series in this exhibition: 1999 (1999), photographs the artist shot on a road trip across the U.S. at the millennium, and In and Around Home (2004-5), an intimate portrait of the artist's domestic life.

Following photographers such as Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Lee Friedlander, and Diane Arbus, Opie's 1999 captures iconic Americana and portrays the expansive American landscape. Opie's take on this photo-documentary genre consists of vibrant photographs that present a conceptual portrait of our ethos in all its diversity and complexity.

In and Around Home is a new series of intimate and politically charged photographs. The artist states, "[the series] has its own sense of Americana…but relies on TV, my family (a queer family), and the events that take place in my neighborhood to represent a microcosm of America." In and Around Home provides a window into the tender, domestic world the artist has built for herself, alongside the public, political world that frames it.

Please join us for the Artist’s Talk at 2pm on Sunday, February 11 in the museum auditorium, followed by a reception. During the run of the exhibition, the Weatherspoon will present a film series, Photography on Film (see details below), that explores contemporary photographers of the American cultural landscape, including William Eggleston, Robert Frank, Sally Mann, and Annie Leibovitz. Presented in the museum auditorium at 7 pm on four Thursdays: February 1, March 1, April 5 and May 3. On Tuesday, April 10, at 2 pm, catch a curator's tour of the exhibition, led by Xandra Eden. All events are free and open to the public.

Born in Sandusky, Ohio, Opie received a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia. She is currently a professor of photography at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, with solo exhibitions at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and the Photographer's Gallery, London; and group exhibitions at Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and the Guggenheim Museum, New York.

Catherine Opie: 1999 & In and Around Home is organized by The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT and the Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA. Accompanying the exhibition is a fully illustrated 96-page catalogue, available in the museum shop for $45.