Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

Giant Steps

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

Welcome to Texas, Elon

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

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

What Will Become of the Library?

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Robert Irwin in Marfa

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

The Last Book Sale

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

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

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Lives in Limbo

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Dario Robleto artist profile

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

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

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

The Catastrophe Guru

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

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

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

The Wonderful World of Bluth

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

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

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

Unveiling “Austin”

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

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

No Gogh!

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

“Trapped” in the Limelight

The Image in the 21st Century

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

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

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

Wall Flowers

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

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

The Great Mellowing

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

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

The Clothes that Make the Man

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.