Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

The Last Book Sale

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

The Catastrophe Guru

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

Robert Irwin in Marfa

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

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

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

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

Giant Steps

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

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

The Wonderful World of Bluth

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

Lives in Limbo

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

Unveiling “Austin”

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

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

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

Dario Robleto artist profile

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

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

The Clothes that Make the Man

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

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

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

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

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

What Will Become of the Library?

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

No Gogh!

The Image in the 21st Century

The Great Mellowing

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

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

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

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

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

“Trapped” in the Limelight

Welcome to Texas, Elon

Wall Flowers