Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

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

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

No Gogh!

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

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

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

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

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

Lives in Limbo

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

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

The Image in the 21st Century

The Last Book Sale

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

Dario Robleto artist profile

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

The Catastrophe Guru

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

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

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

Wall Flowers

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

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

The Clothes that Make the Man

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

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

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

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

What Will Become of the Library?

Welcome to Texas, Elon

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

Giant Steps

Unveiling “Austin”

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

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

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

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

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

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

Robert Irwin in Marfa

The Wonderful World of Bluth

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

“Trapped” in the Limelight

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

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

The Great Mellowing