Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

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

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

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

Robert Irwin in Marfa

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

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

“Trapped” in the Limelight

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

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

What Will Become of the Library?

Dario Robleto artist profile

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

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

The Wonderful World of Bluth

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

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

The Clothes that Make the Man

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

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

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

The Great Mellowing

Welcome to Texas, Elon

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

No Gogh!

Unveiling “Austin”

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

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

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

Lives in Limbo

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

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

Giant Steps

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

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

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

The Last Book Sale

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

Wall Flowers

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

The Catastrophe Guru

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

The Image in the 21st Century