Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

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

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

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

No Gogh!

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

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

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

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

The Great Mellowing

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

Giant Steps

“Trapped” in the Limelight

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

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

The Catastrophe Guru

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

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

Wall Flowers

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

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

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

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

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

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

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

Welcome to Texas, Elon

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

Lives in Limbo

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

What Will Become of the Library?

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

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

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

The Last Book Sale

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

The Wonderful World of Bluth

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

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

The Clothes that Make the Man

Dario Robleto artist profile

Robert Irwin in Marfa

The Image in the 21st Century

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

Unveiling “Austin”

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