Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

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

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

Wall Flowers

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

The Great Mellowing

“Trapped” in the Limelight

What Will Become of the Library?

The Image in the 21st Century

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Lives in Limbo

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

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

Welcome to Texas, Elon

The Catastrophe Guru

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

The Wonderful World of Bluth

Robert Irwin in Marfa

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

Unveiling “Austin”

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

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

The Last Book Sale

No Gogh!

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

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

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

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

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Dario Robleto artist profile

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

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

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

Giant Steps

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

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

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

The Clothes that Make the Man

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

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

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

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

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

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor