Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

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

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

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

Dario Robleto artist profile

Robert Irwin in Marfa

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

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

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

The Image in the 21st Century

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

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

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

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

No Gogh!

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

The Last Book Sale

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

Welcome to Texas, Elon

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

The Wonderful World of Bluth

“Trapped” in the Limelight

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

The Catastrophe Guru

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

Lives in Limbo

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

The Great Mellowing

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

Film Reviews and Local Arts Coverage

Austin Chronicle

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

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

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

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

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

What Will Become of the Library?

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

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

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

Giant Steps

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

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

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

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

Unveiling “Austin”

Wall Flowers

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

The Clothes that Make the Man