Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

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

Dario Robleto artist profile

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

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

The Image in the 21st Century

The Wonderful World of Bluth

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

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

The Clothes that Make the Man

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

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

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

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

Robert Irwin in Marfa

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

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Giant Steps

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

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

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

Unveiling “Austin”

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

The Catastrophe Guru

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

The Last Book Sale

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

What Will Become of the Library?

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

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

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

No Gogh!

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

“Trapped” in the Limelight

The Great Mellowing

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

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

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

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

Lives in Limbo

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

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

Welcome to Texas, Elon

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

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

Wall Flowers