Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

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

Lives in Limbo

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

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

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

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

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

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

The Clothes that Make the Man

Welcome to Texas, Elon

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

Unveiling “Austin”

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

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

No Gogh!

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Robert Irwin in Marfa

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

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

The Image in the 21st Century

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

What Will Become of the Library?

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

The Last Book Sale

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

The Wonderful World of Bluth

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

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

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

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

Dario Robleto artist profile

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

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

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

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

“Trapped” in the Limelight

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

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

The Catastrophe Guru

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

Giant Steps

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

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

The Great Mellowing

Wall Flowers