Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

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

The Wonderful World of Bluth

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

Unveiling “Austin”

Robert Irwin in Marfa

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

Film Reviews and Local Arts Coverage

Austin Chronicle

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

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

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

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

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

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

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

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

The Great Mellowing

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

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

No Gogh!

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

The Catastrophe Guru

Lives in Limbo

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

Giant Steps

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

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

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

Wall Flowers

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

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

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

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

Welcome to Texas, Elon

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

What Will Become of the Library?

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

The Image in the 21st Century

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

Dario Robleto artist profile

“Trapped” in the Limelight

The Last Book Sale

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

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

The Clothes that Make the Man