Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

Welcome to Texas, Elon

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

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

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

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

The Great Mellowing

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

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

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

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

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

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

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

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

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

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

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

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

“Trapped” in the Limelight

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

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

The Catastrophe Guru

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

The Wonderful World of Bluth

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

Lives in Limbo

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

The Last Book Sale

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

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

No Gogh!

Giant Steps

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

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

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

The Clothes that Make the Man

The Image in the 21st Century

Wall Flowers

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

Unveiling “Austin”

What Will Become of the Library?

Dario Robleto artist profile

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

Robert Irwin in Marfa

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)