Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

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

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

Lives in Limbo

The Catastrophe Guru

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

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

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

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

Unveiling “Austin”

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

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

The Clothes that Make the Man

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

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

What Will Become of the Library?

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

Welcome to Texas, Elon

No Gogh!

The Image in the 21st Century

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

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

The Last Book Sale

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

Dario Robleto artist profile

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

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

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

“Trapped” in the Limelight

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

The Wonderful World of Bluth

Giant Steps

Wall Flowers

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

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

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

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

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

Robert Irwin in Marfa

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

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

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

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

The Great Mellowing

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)