Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

What Will Become of the Library?

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

“Trapped” in the Limelight

Wall Flowers

Giant Steps

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

No Gogh!

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

Lives in Limbo

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

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

Unveiling “Austin”

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

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

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

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

The Last Book Sale

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

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

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

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

Welcome to Texas, Elon

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

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

The Wonderful World of Bluth

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

The Catastrophe Guru

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

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

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

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

Dario Robleto artist profile

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

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

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

The Clothes that Make the Man

The Image in the 21st Century

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

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

The Great Mellowing

Robert Irwin in Marfa