Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

What Will Become of the Library?

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

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

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?

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

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

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

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

Wall Flowers

The Clothes that Make the Man

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

The Great Mellowing

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

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

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

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

The Last Book Sale

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

Robert Irwin in Marfa

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

The Catastrophe Guru

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

The Image in the 21st Century

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

Dario Robleto artist profile

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Giant Steps

The Wonderful World of Bluth

Welcome to Texas, Elon

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

“Trapped” in the Limelight

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

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

Unveiling “Austin”

Lives in Limbo

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

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

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

No Gogh!

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

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