Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Unveiling “Austin”

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

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

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

“Trapped” in the Limelight

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

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

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

The Last Book Sale

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

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

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

Robert Irwin in Marfa

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

Lives in Limbo

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

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

Welcome to Texas, Elon

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

What Will Become of the Library?

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

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

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Giant Steps

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

The Wonderful World of Bluth

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

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

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

The Great Mellowing

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

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

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

No Gogh!

The Clothes that Make the Man

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

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

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

The Catastrophe Guru

Dario Robleto artist profile

The Image in the 21st Century

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

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

Wall Flowers

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)