Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

The Image in the 21st Century

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

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

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

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

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

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

Giant Steps

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

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

The Catastrophe Guru

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

The Great Mellowing

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

The Clothes that Make the Man

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

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

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

The Last Book Sale

“Trapped” in the Limelight

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

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

No Gogh!

Welcome to Texas, Elon

The Wonderful World of Bluth

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

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

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

What Will Become of the Library?

Unveiling “Austin”

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

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

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

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

Wall Flowers

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

Dario Robleto artist profile

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

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

Lives in Limbo

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

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

Robert Irwin in Marfa

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

Bonnie and Clyde at 50