Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

The Wonderful World of Bluth

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

Unveiling “Austin”

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

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

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

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

The Great Mellowing

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

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

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

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

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

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

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

Wall Flowers

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

The Catastrophe Guru

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

Dario Robleto artist profile

What Will Become of the Library?

Lives in Limbo

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

Welcome to Texas, Elon

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

The Image in the 21st Century

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

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

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

Giant Steps

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

The Clothes that Make the Man

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

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

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

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

The Last Book Sale

No Gogh!

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

Robert Irwin in Marfa

“Trapped” in the Limelight

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince