Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

What Will Become of the Library?

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

The Great Mellowing

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

Wall Flowers

The Last Book Sale

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

Unveiling “Austin”

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

Dario Robleto artist profile

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

The Wonderful World of Bluth

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

Giant Steps

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

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

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

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

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

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

Lives in Limbo

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

Robert Irwin in Marfa

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

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

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

“Trapped” in the Limelight

The Image in the 21st Century

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

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

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

Welcome to Texas, Elon

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

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

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

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

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

The Clothes that Make the Man

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

The Catastrophe Guru

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

No Gogh!

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

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

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0