Catherine Opie’s plan to help UCLA art students graduate with way less debt

Artist Catherine Opie, a UCLA professor of photography for 20 years, has big ideas for the university’s art department. Among them: Reduce student debt and lower economic barriers to education.

It’s a vision Opie is in a position to start realizing: UCLA has named her art department chair, it announced on Tuesday. She steps into the role Sept. 1, taking over for artist Andrea Fraser, who has led the department since January 2018.

In 2019, UCLA announced Opie as the university’s inaugural endowed chair in the art department, a position underwritten by a $2-million gift from philanthropists Lynda and Stewart Resnick. That role is an undergraduate and graduate teaching position. The departmental chair is the lead administrative position, working with faculty and staff to develop the academic curriculum, goals and priorities of the art department.

Opie’s commitment to educational access for all students is needed “now more than ever,” said Brett Steele, UCLA’s dean of the School of the Arts and Architecture.

“As the arts themselves evolve, particularly in this new world we find ourselves in and the focus that last year’s crisis placed on our needing to find ways to support all students, Cathy’s voice is vital,” he said, referring to inequities among students that were illuminated, in part, by the pandemic.

— Deborah Vankin, Los Angeles Times, Jun. 29, 2021