Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

Giant Steps

The Great Mellowing

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

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

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

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

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

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

Lives in Limbo

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

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

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

The Last Book Sale

What Will Become of the Library?

The Wonderful World of Bluth

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

Welcome to Texas, Elon

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

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

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

Robert Irwin in Marfa

“Trapped” in the Limelight

Unveiling “Austin”

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

No Gogh!

Dario Robleto artist profile

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

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

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

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

The Clothes that Make the Man

The Catastrophe Guru

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

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

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

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

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

The Image in the 21st Century

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

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

Wall Flowers

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

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

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0