Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

Welcome to Texas, Elon

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

Giant Steps

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

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

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

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

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

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

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

No Gogh!

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

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

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

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

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

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

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

What Will Become of the Library?

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

The Great Mellowing

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

The Wonderful World of Bluth

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

Wall Flowers

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

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

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

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

Unveiling “Austin”

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

Dario Robleto artist profile

“Trapped” in the Limelight

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

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

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

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

Robert Irwin in Marfa

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

Lives in Limbo

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

The Image in the 21st Century

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

The Last Book Sale

The Catastrophe Guru

The Clothes that Make the Man

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