Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

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

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

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

Wall Flowers

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

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

Giant Steps

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

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

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

Dario Robleto artist profile

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

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

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

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

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

The Image in the 21st Century

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

Lives in Limbo

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

Robert Irwin in Marfa

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

What Will Become of the Library?

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

Welcome to Texas, Elon

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

The Wonderful World of Bluth

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

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

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

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

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

The Catastrophe Guru

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

“Trapped” in the Limelight

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

The Clothes that Make the Man

Unveiling “Austin”

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

No Gogh!

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

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

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

The Great Mellowing

The Last Book Sale

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