Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

Wall Flowers

The Last Book Sale

While We Were Sleeping: The Feds Say a Price-fixing Scheme Costs Texas Patients Tens of Millions

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

The Catastrophe Guru

No Sign of Trump’s “Millions” of Illegal Voters in Texas

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

The Great Mellowing

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

The Psychedelic State of South Texas (Fernando A. Flores)

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

The Clothes that Make the Man

Robert Irwin in Marfa

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

Sedrick Huckaby Looks His Subjects in the Eye, from Dreamers to an Ex-President

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

“Trapped” in the Limelight

Unveiling “Austin”

Houston’s National Women’s Conference, 40 Years Later

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

Has a San Antonio Inventor Solved a Problem of Small-scale Wind Power?

Brutally Suppressed in Her Lifetime, Gertrude Beasley Is Finally on Our Bookshelves

Lives in Limbo

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

The Wonderful World of Bluth

Luz Maria Sanchez: Narco Violence, as Seen by a Journalist-Turned-Artist

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

No Gogh!

The Image in the 21st Century

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

The ‘Moby Dick’ of Texas Football Novels Is Hard-hitting as Ever

EAST Austin Is Over. What’s Next for an Art Scene That’s Losing Its Nucleus?

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

What Will Become of the Library?

Dario Robleto artist profile

Giant Steps

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

Did Texas Blackouts Reveal Austin’s New Real-Estate Hot Spots?

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

The People’s Champion (Vincent Valdez’s ‘Dream Baby Dream’)

Film Reviews and Local Arts Coverage

Austin Chronicle

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

Welcome to Texas, Elon

Houston Photo Exhibit Documents First Markers of Modern U.S.-Mexico Border

The Steve Jobs of West Texas