Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

Lives in Limbo

“Trapped” in the Limelight

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Welcome to Texas, Elon

What Will Become of the Library?

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

Robert Irwin in Marfa

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

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

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

The Wonderful World of Bluth

The Image in the 21st Century

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

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

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

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

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

Wall Flowers

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

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

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

No Gogh!

The Last Book Sale

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

Dario Robleto artist profile

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

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

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

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

The Great Mellowing

Unveiling “Austin”

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

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

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

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

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

Giant Steps

The Catastrophe Guru

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

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

The Clothes that Make the Man

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