Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

Lives in Limbo

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

Dario Robleto artist profile

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

No Gogh!

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

The Catastrophe Guru

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

The Image in the 21st Century

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

The Wonderful World of Bluth

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

Welcome to Texas, Elon

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

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

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

What Will Become of the Library?

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

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

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

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

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

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

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

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

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

The Clothes that Make the Man

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

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

Unveiling “Austin”

“Trapped” in the Limelight

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

Wall Flowers

The Last Book Sale

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

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

The Great Mellowing

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

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

Giant Steps

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

Robert Irwin in Marfa

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?