Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

No Gogh!

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

Robert Irwin in Marfa

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

The Great Mellowing

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

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

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

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

Wall Flowers

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

What Will Become of the Library?

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

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

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

The Last Book Sale

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

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

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

The Image in the 21st Century

Lives in Limbo

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

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

Giant Steps

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

“Trapped” in the Limelight

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

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

Unveiling “Austin”

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Welcome to Texas, Elon

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

The Clothes that Make the Man

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

The Wonderful World of Bluth

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

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

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

The Catastrophe Guru

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

Dario Robleto artist profile

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

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

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

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

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

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son