Tom Christie

an expert cooks Korean BBQ at Choonchun Dakgalbi; Credit: Anne Fishbein

Korean BBQ Explosion at Torrance High School Injures 10 Students

Tom Christie
One female student remains hospitalized at Torrance Memorial Medical Center after Friday's lunchtime "cooking accident" at North High School left ten students with injuries. As part of a fundraising activity to benefit Unicef, the students were cooking Korean BBQ to sell to other students when a portable single-burner butane stove......
Edward Ruscha

Dennis Hopper at MOCA: Double Trouble

Tom Christie
When listening to Jeffrey Deitch attempt to mythologize Dennis Hopper the other day, and then to Julian Schnabel likewise attempt to place his friend Hopper at an art-world level the actor was not able to reach during his lifetime — a mere six weeks past — and, indeed, while I......
It’s pronounced dye-tch

Deitch’s New Project

Tom Christie
You could forgive Jeffrey Deitch for looking a little shell-shocked Tuesday afternoon. After all, he had just officially made the transition from New York art impresario to Los Angeles museum director, and it hadn’t been a completely smooth one. There were the swirling rumors on Friday afternoon, then the canceled......
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Stage Raw: It Worked For Me — L.A. Opera's 'The Elixir of Love'

Tom Christie
Finally, someone got it right. For the past year and a half, I've seen operatic and balletic love stories featuring mature performers in roles that suggest, if not emphasize, relative youth: The Giselles and the Juliets, for instance, or the hot and lusty Carmen's Don Jose, played in the L.A......
Susan Silton's Apologizing Avatars (Mel Gibson

Avatart: Susan Silton and the Art of Public Apology

Tom Christie
Susan Silton’s avatars came to life through her interest in, and ambivalence about, a certain social network. The L.A. artist wanted to create a project about Facebook, on Facebook. “I absolutely have skepticism about it,” she says, “but am nevertheless interested in it, in the way that it constructs a......
Lily Burk

Something About Lily

Tom Christie
She was just 17. They gathered on the lawn at Barnsdall Park on Sunday: the friends of Lily Burk and her parents, Greg and Deb. Some 500 of them, kids and teachers from Oakwood School, where Lily would have been a senior; likewise, kids and teachers from her former schools,......
LACMA; Credit: Wikipeda commons

LACMA to Shutter Film Program, Rethink It

Tom Christie
Michael Govan and Ian Birnie sat on the patio at the L.A. County Museum of Art today and explained the dismantling of their film department. Which is to say, Govan planted an IED and Birnie did his best to throw his body over it. The fact that the bomb won't......