Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

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

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

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

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

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

Robert Irwin in Marfa

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

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

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

Dario Robleto artist profile

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

The Image in the 21st Century

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

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

No Gogh!

The Clothes that Make the Man

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

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

“Trapped” in the Limelight

The Catastrophe Guru

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

Welcome to Texas, Elon

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

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

The Great Mellowing

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

Unveiling “Austin”

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

Giant Steps

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

The Last Book Sale

The Wonderful World of Bluth

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

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

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

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

Lives in Limbo

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

What Will Become of the Library?

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

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

Wall Flowers

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box