Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

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

Robert Irwin in Marfa

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

“Trapped” in the Limelight

The Wonderful World of Bluth

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

No Gogh!

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

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

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

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

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

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

Wall Flowers

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

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

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

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

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

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

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

The Great Mellowing

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

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

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

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

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

What Will Become of the Library?

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

Lives in Limbo

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

Welcome to Texas, Elon

Dario Robleto artist profile

The Catastrophe Guru

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

The Clothes that Make the Man

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

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

Unveiling “Austin”

The Last Book Sale

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

The Image in the 21st Century

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

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

Giant Steps

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?