Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

The Clothes that Make the Man

Dario Robleto artist profile

What Will Become of the Library?

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

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

Lives in Limbo

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

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

The Wonderful World of Bluth

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

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Wall Flowers

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

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

The Catastrophe Guru

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

“Trapped” in the Limelight

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

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

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Welcome to Texas, Elon

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

The Last Book Sale

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

The Image in the 21st Century

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

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

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

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

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

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

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

Film Reviews and Local Arts Coverage

Austin Chronicle

No Gogh!

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

Robert Irwin in Marfa

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

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

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

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

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

The Great Mellowing

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

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

Giant Steps

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

Unveiling “Austin”

What Will Become of the Paper Book?