Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

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

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

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

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

The Last Book Sale

Lives in Limbo

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

No Gogh!

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?

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

Giant Steps

Welcome to Texas, Elon

Dario Robleto artist profile

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

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

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

The Great Mellowing

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

The Catastrophe Guru

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

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

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

“Trapped” in the Limelight

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

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

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

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

Wall Flowers

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

The Image in the 21st Century

Robert Irwin in Marfa

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

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

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

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

The Clothes that Make the Man

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

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

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

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

The Wonderful World of Bluth

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

What Will Become of the Library?

Unveiling “Austin”