Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

The Last Book Sale

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

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

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

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

The Catastrophe Guru

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

“Trapped” in the Limelight

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

Dario Robleto artist profile

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

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

Unveiling “Austin”

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

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

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

Welcome to Texas, Elon

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

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

Lives in Limbo

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

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

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

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

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

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

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

What Will Become of the Library?

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

The Wonderful World of Bluth

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

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

Robert Irwin in Marfa

Giant Steps

Wall Flowers

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

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

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

No Gogh!

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

The Clothes that Make the Man

The Image in the 21st Century

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

The Great Mellowing

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