Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

The Wonderful World of Bluth

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

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

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

Dario Robleto artist profile

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

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

Unveiling “Austin”

What Will Become of the Library?

The Image in the 21st Century

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

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

Wall Flowers

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

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

Robert Irwin in Marfa

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

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

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

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

Giant Steps

The Catastrophe Guru

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

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

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Welcome to Texas, Elon

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

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

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

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

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

The Great Mellowing

Lives in Limbo

No Gogh!

“Trapped” in the Limelight

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

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

The Last Book Sale

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

The Clothes that Make the Man

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

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

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

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)