Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

Robert Irwin in Marfa

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

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

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

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

The Wonderful World of Bluth

Wall Flowers

No Gogh!

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

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

The Catastrophe Guru

“Trapped” in the Limelight

The Clothes that Make the Man

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

Unveiling “Austin”

The Image in the 21st Century

Giant Steps

Dario Robleto artist profile

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

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

Welcome to Texas, Elon

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

Lives in Limbo

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

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

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

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

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

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

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

The Great Mellowing

The Last Book Sale

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

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

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

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

What Will Become of the Library?

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

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