Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

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

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

“Trapped” in the Limelight

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

Welcome to Texas, Elon

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

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

The Image in the 21st Century

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

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

Robert Irwin in Marfa

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

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

Wall Flowers

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Lives in Limbo

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

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

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

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

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

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

The Clothes that Make the Man

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

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

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

The Catastrophe Guru

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

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

The Great Mellowing

What Will Become of the Library?

No Gogh!

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

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

Dario Robleto artist profile

Unveiling “Austin”

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

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

The Wonderful World of Bluth

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

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

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

Giant Steps

The Last Book Sale

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince