Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

Giant Steps

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

Wall Flowers

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

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

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

No Gogh!

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

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

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

The Catastrophe Guru

The Last Book Sale

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

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

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

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

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

Dario Robleto artist profile

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

Lives in Limbo

“Trapped” in the Limelight

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

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

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

The Image in the 21st Century

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

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

Welcome to Texas, Elon

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

Robert Irwin in Marfa

The Clothes that Make the Man

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

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

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

Unveiling “Austin”

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

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

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

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

The Great Mellowing

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

The Wonderful World of Bluth

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

What Will Become of the Library?

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