Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

Welcome to Texas, Elon

The Great Mellowing

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

The Catastrophe Guru

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

Robert Irwin in Marfa

The Wonderful World of Bluth

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

Unveiling “Austin”

No Gogh!

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

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

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

Lives in Limbo

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

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

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

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

“Trapped” in the Limelight

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

The Clothes that Make the Man

Wall Flowers

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

Giant Steps

Dario Robleto artist profile

The Last Book Sale

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

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

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

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

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

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

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

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

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

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

The Image in the 21st Century

What Will Become of the Library?

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

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

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu