Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

Dario Robleto artist profile

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

The Great Mellowing

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

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

No Gogh!

Lives in Limbo

The Wonderful World of Bluth

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

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

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

Film Reviews and Local Arts Coverage

Austin Chronicle

Wall Flowers

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

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

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

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

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

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

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

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

The Catastrophe Guru

Giant Steps

Robert Irwin in Marfa

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

The Last Book Sale

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

The Image in the 21st Century

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

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

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

“Trapped” in the Limelight

Unveiling “Austin”

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

Welcome to Texas, Elon

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

The Clothes that Make the Man

What Will Become of the Library?

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

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

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

Bonnie and Clyde at 50