Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

What Will Become of the Library?

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

Dario Robleto artist profile

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

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

The Catastrophe Guru

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

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

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

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

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

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

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

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

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

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

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

The Clothes that Make the Man

No Gogh!

Giant Steps

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

The Last Book Sale

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

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

“Trapped” in the Limelight

Robert Irwin in Marfa

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

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

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

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

Lives in Limbo

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

Unveiling “Austin”

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Film Reviews and Local Arts Coverage

Austin Chronicle

Wall Flowers

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

The Wonderful World of Bluth

Welcome to Texas, Elon

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

The Image in the 21st Century

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

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

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

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

The Great Mellowing

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box