Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

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

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

Wall Flowers

“Trapped” in the Limelight

Welcome to Texas, Elon

The Last Book Sale

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Unveiling “Austin”

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

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

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

The Image in the 21st Century

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

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

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

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

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

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

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

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

Giant Steps

Lives in Limbo

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

The Wonderful World of Bluth

The Catastrophe Guru

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

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

No Gogh!

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

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

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

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

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

Dario Robleto artist profile

The Great Mellowing

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

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

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

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

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

What Will Become of the Library?

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

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

Robert Irwin in Marfa

The Clothes that Make the Man

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas