Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

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

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

The Last Book Sale

Dario Robleto artist profile

Robert Irwin in Marfa

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

The Image in the 21st Century

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

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

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

Unveiling “Austin”

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

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

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

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

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

“Trapped” in the Limelight

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

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

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

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

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

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

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

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

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

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

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

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

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

The Great Mellowing

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

What Will Become of the Library?

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

Welcome to Texas, Elon

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

The Clothes that Make the Man

Wall Flowers

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

No Gogh!

Lives in Limbo

The Catastrophe Guru

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

The Wonderful World of Bluth

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

Giant Steps

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)