Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

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

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

Wall Flowers

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

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

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

Welcome to Texas, Elon

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?

The Image in the 21st Century

The Wonderful World of Bluth

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

The Clothes that Make the Man

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

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

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

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

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

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

Unveiling “Austin”

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

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

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

Robert Irwin in Marfa

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

The Great Mellowing

No Gogh!

The Last Book Sale

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

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

Dario Robleto artist profile

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

“Trapped” in the Limelight

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

What Will Become of the Library?

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

The Catastrophe Guru

Lives in Limbo

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

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

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

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

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

Giant Steps