Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

The Great Mellowing

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

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

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

Wall Flowers

The Last Book Sale

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

What Will Become of the Library?

Giant Steps

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

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

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

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

Dario Robleto artist profile

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

“Trapped” in the Limelight

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

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

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

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

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

The Image in the 21st Century

Lives in Limbo

Welcome to Texas, Elon

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

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

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

No Gogh!

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

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

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

Unveiling “Austin”

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

Robert Irwin in Marfa

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

The Catastrophe Guru

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

The Wonderful World of Bluth

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

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

The Clothes that Make the Man

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

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

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box