Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

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

What Will Become of the Library?

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

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

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

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

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

The Catastrophe Guru

The Image in the 21st Century

The Great Mellowing

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

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

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

Dario Robleto artist profile

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Lives in Limbo

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

Welcome to Texas, Elon

The Clothes that Make the Man

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

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

The Last Book Sale

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

Wall Flowers

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

Giant Steps

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

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

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

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

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

No Gogh!

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

The Wonderful World of Bluth

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

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

Unveiling “Austin”

“Trapped” in the Limelight

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

Robert Irwin in Marfa

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

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

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

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

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.