Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

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

The Last Book Sale

The Great Mellowing

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

The Wonderful World of Bluth

Unveiling “Austin”

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

The Clothes that Make the Man

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Lives in Limbo

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

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

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

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

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

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

Giant Steps

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

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

What Will Become of the Library?

The Image in the 21st Century

Dario Robleto artist profile

“Trapped” in the Limelight

The Catastrophe Guru

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

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

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

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

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

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Robert Irwin in Marfa

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

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

Welcome to Texas, Elon

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

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

Wall Flowers

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

No Gogh!

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

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

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