Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

No Gogh!

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

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

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

The Last Book Sale

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

The Catastrophe Guru

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

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

Lives in Limbo

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

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

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

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

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

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

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

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

“Trapped” in the Limelight

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

Wall Flowers

The Great Mellowing

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

Dario Robleto artist profile

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

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

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

Robert Irwin in Marfa

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

The Image in the 21st Century

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

Unveiling “Austin”

Welcome to Texas, Elon

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

The Wonderful World of Bluth

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

What Will Become of the Library?

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

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

The Clothes that Make the Man

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

Giant Steps

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

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

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

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

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