Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

Unveiling “Austin”

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

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

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

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

Welcome to Texas, Elon

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

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

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

The Wonderful World of Bluth

Lives in Limbo

Giant Steps

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

The Great Mellowing

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

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

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

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

The Catastrophe Guru

“Trapped” in the Limelight

No Gogh!

The Clothes that Make the Man

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

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

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

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

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

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

The Last Book Sale

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

The Image in the 21st Century

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

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

Dario Robleto artist profile

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

Robert Irwin in Marfa

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

Wall Flowers

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

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

What Will Become of the Library?

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)