This recent work in an ongoing series by internationally renowned and LA-based photographer Catherine Opie was included in the museum’s 2010 exhibition “Catherine Opie: Figure and Landscape.” The show’s primary focus is high-school football, a subject that allowed Opie to explore issues of masculinity, community, and national identity. Over the last three years, Opie photographed football games and players in seven states across America. Atmospheric cues locate each regional site, while gestures and gazes reveal the adolescent players’ disparate psychologies. Football Landscape #13 - Twentynine Palms vs. Big Bear, Twentynine Palms, CA depicts a late afternoon practice session in the somewhat otherworldly light of the desert, players staggered in Eakins-like positions of repose. Looking past the clichés associated with football, Opie perceives diversity in the individuals and communities that celebrate the game. While this body of work was shown in conjunction with LACMA’s exhibition “ Manly Pursuits: The Sporting Images of Thomas Eakins,” Opie’s work will join the collection and interact further with American landscape photography over the decades, addressing and overturning conventions of idealism and realism. This is only the fourth work by Opie to enter the collection: a portrait (1993, donated in 2007), a self-portrait within the Irmas Collection (1993), and a work from her ice-house series (2001). Britt Salvesen, Curator and Head, Wallis Annenberg Photography Department and Prints and Drawings Department (2011)