Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

The Image in the 21st Century

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

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

Lives in Limbo

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

Giant Steps

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

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

No Gogh!

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

Film Reviews and Local Arts Coverage

Austin Chronicle

Dario Robleto artist profile

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

The Wonderful World of Bluth

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

Welcome to Texas, Elon

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

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

Unveiling “Austin”

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

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

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

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

The Clothes that Make the Man

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

What Will Become of the Library?

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

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

Wall Flowers

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

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

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

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

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

The Catastrophe Guru

Robert Irwin in Marfa

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

The Last Book Sale

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

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

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

“Trapped” in the Limelight

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

The Great Mellowing

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

The Steve Jobs of West Texas