Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

The Last Book Sale

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

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

The Great Mellowing

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

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

What Will Become of the Library?

Giant Steps

Unveiling “Austin”

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

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

Robert Irwin in Marfa

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

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

The Catastrophe Guru

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Welcome to Texas, Elon

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Dario Robleto artist profile

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

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

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

No Gogh!

Wall Flowers

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

“Trapped” in the Limelight

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

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

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

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

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

Lives in Limbo

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

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

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

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

The Wonderful World of Bluth

The Image in the 21st Century

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

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

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

The Clothes that Make the Man

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor