Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

The Wonderful World of Bluth

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

The Great Mellowing

The Image in the 21st Century

Giant Steps

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

Unveiling “Austin”

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

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

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

Wall Flowers

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

Dario Robleto artist profile

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

What Will Become of the Library?

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

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

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

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

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

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

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

No Gogh!

The Catastrophe Guru

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

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

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

The Last Book Sale

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

Robert Irwin in Marfa

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

The Clothes that Make the Man

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

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

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

Welcome to Texas, Elon

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

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

Lives in Limbo

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

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

“Trapped” in the Limelight

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

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

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