Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

“Trapped” in the Limelight

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

Welcome to Texas, Elon

The Image in the 21st Century

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

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

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

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

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

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

What Will Become of the Library?

Wall Flowers

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

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

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

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

Unveiling “Austin”

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

Lives in Limbo

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

The Clothes that Make the Man

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

The Last Book Sale

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

Dario Robleto artist profile

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

Robert Irwin in Marfa

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

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

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

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

No Gogh!

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

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

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

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

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

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

The Catastrophe Guru

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

Giant Steps

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

The Wonderful World of Bluth

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

The Great Mellowing

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