Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

No Gogh!

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

Giant Steps

Dario Robleto artist profile

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

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

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

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

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

The Image in the 21st Century

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

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

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

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

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

Lives in Limbo

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Film Reviews and Local Arts Coverage

Austin Chronicle

Robert Irwin in Marfa

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

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

Welcome to Texas, Elon

The Catastrophe Guru

The Wonderful World of Bluth

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

Unveiling “Austin”

The Great Mellowing

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

“Trapped” in the Limelight

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

The Last Book Sale

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

The Clothes that Make the Man

What Will Become of the Library?

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

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

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

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

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

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

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

Wall Flowers

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure