Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Welcome to Texas, Elon

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

Giant Steps

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

The Wonderful World of Bluth

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

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

Lives in Limbo

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

Robert Irwin in Marfa

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

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

The Catastrophe Guru

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

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

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

The Great Mellowing

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

Wall Flowers

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

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

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

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

The Clothes that Make the Man

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

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

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

Dario Robleto artist profile

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

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

No Gogh!

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

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

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

What Will Become of the Library?

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

The Image in the 21st Century

“Trapped” in the Limelight

The Last Book Sale

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

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

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

Unveiling “Austin”

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor