Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

Welcome to Texas, Elon

What Will Become of the Library?

Lives in Limbo

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

Wall Flowers

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

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

No Gogh!

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

The Image in the 21st Century

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

The Wonderful World of Bluth

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

“Trapped” in the Limelight

The Last Book Sale

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

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

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

The Great Mellowing

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

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

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

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

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

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

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

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

Giant Steps

The Clothes that Make the Man

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

The Catastrophe Guru

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

Unveiling “Austin”

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

Robert Irwin in Marfa

Dario Robleto artist profile

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

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

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

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

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

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

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

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