Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

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

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

Wall Flowers

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

What Will Become of the Library?

No Gogh!

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

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

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

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

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

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

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

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

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

Giant Steps

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

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

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

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

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

Lives in Limbo

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

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

Welcome to Texas, Elon

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

Unveiling “Austin”

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

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

The Clothes that Make the Man

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

Dario Robleto artist profile

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

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

The Wonderful World of Bluth

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

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

The Last Book Sale

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

Robert Irwin in Marfa

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

The Great Mellowing

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

The Catastrophe Guru

“Trapped” in the Limelight

The Image in the 21st Century

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?