Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

The Catastrophe Guru

Dario Robleto artist profile

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

Welcome to Texas, Elon

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

No Gogh!

Giant Steps

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

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

Lives in Limbo

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

Robert Irwin in Marfa

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

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

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

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

“Trapped” in the Limelight

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

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

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

Wall Flowers

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

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

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

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

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

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

What Will Become of the Library?

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

The Wonderful World of Bluth

The Last Book Sale

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

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

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

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

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

The Great Mellowing

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

Unveiling “Austin”

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

The Image in the 21st Century

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

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

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

The Clothes that Make the Man

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son