Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

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

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

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

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

Wall Flowers

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

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

Dario Robleto artist profile

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

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

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

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Lives in Limbo

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

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

Unveiling “Austin”

The Wonderful World of Bluth

What Will Become of the Library?

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

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

No Gogh!

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

The Great Mellowing

The Catastrophe Guru

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

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

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

The Last Book Sale

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

Robert Irwin in Marfa

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

The Clothes that Make the Man

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

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

The Image in the 21st Century

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

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

Welcome to Texas, Elon

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

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

Giant Steps

“Trapped” in the Limelight

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

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment