Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

No Gogh!

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

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Wall Flowers

The Great Mellowing

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

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

“Trapped” in the Limelight

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

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

Robert Irwin in Marfa

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

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

The Image in the 21st Century

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

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

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

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

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

The Wonderful World of Bluth

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

The Last Book Sale

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

Unveiling “Austin”

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Dario Robleto artist profile

The Catastrophe Guru

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

Welcome to Texas, Elon

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

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

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

The Clothes that Make the Man

What Will Become of the Library?

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

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

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

Giant Steps

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

Lives in Limbo

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

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

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

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