Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

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

Robert Irwin in Marfa

What Will Become of the Library?

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

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

The Image in the 21st Century

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

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

The Catastrophe Guru

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

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

The Great Mellowing

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

Wall Flowers

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

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

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

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

Giant Steps

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

“Trapped” in the Limelight

The Clothes that Make the Man

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

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

Unveiling “Austin”

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

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

Welcome to Texas, Elon

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

Film Reviews and Local Arts Coverage

Austin Chronicle

Dario Robleto artist profile

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

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

The Last Book Sale

Lives in Limbo

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

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

No Gogh!

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

The Wonderful World of Bluth

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

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