Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

Lives in Limbo

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

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

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

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

The Wonderful World of Bluth

Robert Irwin in Marfa

The Last Book Sale

No Gogh!

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

Dario Robleto artist profile

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

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

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

Wall Flowers

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

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

Welcome to Texas, Elon

The Clothes that Make the Man

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

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

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

The Image in the 21st Century

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

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

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

What Will Become of the Library?

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

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

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

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

“Trapped” in the Limelight

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

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

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

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

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Giant Steps

The Great Mellowing

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

Unveiling “Austin”

The Catastrophe Guru

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar