Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Wall Flowers

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

No Gogh!

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

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

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

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

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

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

Dario Robleto artist profile

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

Welcome to Texas, Elon

The Great Mellowing

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

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

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

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

Unveiling “Austin”

“Trapped” in the Limelight

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

Giant Steps

The Last Book Sale

The Image in the 21st Century

Lives in Limbo

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

What Will Become of the Library?

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

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

The Clothes that Make the Man

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

The Wonderful World of Bluth

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

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

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

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

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

Robert Irwin in Marfa

The Catastrophe Guru

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

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

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

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

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

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.