Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

Robert Irwin in Marfa

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

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

What Will Become of the Library?

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

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

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

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

Unveiling “Austin”

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

No Gogh!

“Trapped” in the Limelight

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

Wall Flowers

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

Giant Steps

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

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

The Catastrophe Guru

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

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

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

Lives in Limbo

The Image in the 21st Century

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

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

Welcome to Texas, Elon

The Wonderful World of Bluth

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

The Great Mellowing

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

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

Dario Robleto artist profile

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

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

The Last Book Sale

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

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

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

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

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

The Clothes that Make the Man

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box