Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

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

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

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

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

Welcome to Texas, Elon

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

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

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

The Last Book Sale

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

What Will Become of the Library?

The Great Mellowing

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

“Trapped” in the Limelight

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

The Image in the 21st Century

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

The Clothes that Make the Man

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

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

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

The Catastrophe Guru

Dario Robleto artist profile

Robert Irwin in Marfa

No Gogh!

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

The Wonderful World of Bluth

Giant Steps

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

Unveiling “Austin”

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Wall Flowers

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

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

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

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

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

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

Lives in Limbo

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