Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

Welcome to Texas, Elon

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

No Gogh!

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

The Last Book Sale

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

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

Wall Flowers

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

The Great Mellowing

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

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

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

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

Lives in Limbo

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

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

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

Giant Steps

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

Robert Irwin in Marfa

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

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

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

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

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

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

Unveiling “Austin”

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

Dario Robleto artist profile

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

The Clothes that Make the Man

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

The Image in the 21st Century

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

The Catastrophe Guru

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

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

“Trapped” in the Limelight

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

The Wonderful World of Bluth

What Will Become of the Library?

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son