Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

The Catastrophe Guru

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

Unveiling “Austin”

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

“Trapped” in the Limelight

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

Lives in Limbo

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

What Will Become of the Library?

No Gogh!

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

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

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

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

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Dario Robleto artist profile

Giant Steps

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

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

The Clothes that Make the Man

The Great Mellowing

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

The Image in the 21st Century

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

Welcome to Texas, Elon

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

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

The Wonderful World of Bluth

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

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

The Last Book Sale

Robert Irwin in Marfa

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?

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

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

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

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

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Wall Flowers

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

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

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