Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

Robert Irwin in Marfa

Giant Steps

The Great Mellowing

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

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

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

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

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

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

No Gogh!

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

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

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

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

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

Wall Flowers

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

The Clothes that Make the Man

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

Dario Robleto artist profile

The Catastrophe Guru

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

Lives in Limbo

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

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

Welcome to Texas, Elon

The Wonderful World of Bluth

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

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

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

“Trapped” in the Limelight

What Will Become of the Library?

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

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

The Image in the 21st Century

Unveiling “Austin”

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

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

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

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

The Last Book Sale

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

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

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

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?