Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

The Image in the 21st Century

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

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

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

No Gogh!

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

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

Robert Irwin in Marfa

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

What Will Become of the Library?

Wall Flowers

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

Unveiling “Austin”

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

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

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

The Last Book Sale

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

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

Dario Robleto artist profile

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

The Great Mellowing

Lives in Limbo

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

The Catastrophe Guru

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

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

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

The Clothes that Make the Man

Welcome to Texas, Elon

The Wonderful World of Bluth

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

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

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

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

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

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

Giant Steps

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

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

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

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

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

“Trapped” in the Limelight