Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

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

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

Giant Steps

The Clothes that Make the Man

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

Welcome to Texas, Elon

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

Dario Robleto artist profile

What Will Become of the Library?

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

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

Robert Irwin in Marfa

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

Wall Flowers

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

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

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

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

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

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

The Last Book Sale

The Image in the 21st Century

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Film Reviews and Local Arts Coverage

Austin Chronicle

“Trapped” in the Limelight

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

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

Unveiling “Austin”

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

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

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

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

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

The Wonderful World of Bluth

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

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

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

Lives in Limbo

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

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

The Great Mellowing

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

No Gogh!

The Catastrophe Guru

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation