Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

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

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

Welcome to Texas, Elon

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

The Clothes that Make the Man

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

“Trapped” in the Limelight

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

Unveiling “Austin”

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

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

Dario Robleto artist profile

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

Wall Flowers

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

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

The Image in the 21st Century

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

What Will Become of the Library?

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

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

The Wonderful World of Bluth

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

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

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

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

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

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

No Gogh!

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

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Robert Irwin in Marfa

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

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

Lives in Limbo

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

The Catastrophe Guru

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

The Great Mellowing

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

The Last Book Sale

Giant Steps

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

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

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

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)