Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

What Will Become of the Library?

Dario Robleto artist profile

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

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

Robert Irwin in Marfa

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

The Image in the 21st Century

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

The Clothes that Make the Man

“Trapped” in the Limelight

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Giant Steps

The Catastrophe Guru

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

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

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

Film Reviews and Local Arts Coverage

Austin Chronicle

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

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

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

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

Wall Flowers

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

The Wonderful World of Bluth

The Great Mellowing

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

Lives in Limbo

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

No Gogh!

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

Welcome to Texas, Elon

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

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

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

The Last Book Sale

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

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

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

Unveiling “Austin”

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

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters