Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

Dario Robleto artist profile

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

What Will Become of the Library?

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

Lives in Limbo

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

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

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

The Last Book Sale

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

Giant Steps

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

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

Wall Flowers

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

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

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

The Wonderful World of Bluth

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

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

Welcome to Texas, Elon

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

Unveiling “Austin”

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

The Catastrophe Guru

Robert Irwin in Marfa

“Trapped” in the Limelight

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

No Gogh!

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

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

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

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

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

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

The Clothes that Make the Man

The Image in the 21st Century

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

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

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

The Great Mellowing