Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

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

Wall Flowers

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

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

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

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

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

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

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

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

The Great Mellowing

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

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

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

No Gogh!

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

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

Unveiling “Austin”

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

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

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

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

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

The Clothes that Make the Man

The Last Book Sale

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

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

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

Dario Robleto artist profile

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

Robert Irwin in Marfa

Giant Steps

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

“Trapped” in the Limelight

Welcome to Texas, Elon

What Will Become of the Library?

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

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

The Catastrophe Guru

The Wonderful World of Bluth

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

The Image in the 21st Century

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

Lives in Limbo

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture