Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

The Last Book Sale

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

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

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

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

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

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

Giant Steps

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

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

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

No Gogh!

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

Wall Flowers

Lives in Limbo

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

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

The Great Mellowing

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

Dario Robleto artist profile

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

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

Unveiling “Austin”

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

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

The Catastrophe Guru

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

The Image in the 21st Century

What Will Become of the Library?

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

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

Robert Irwin in Marfa

The Clothes that Make the Man

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

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

“Trapped” in the Limelight

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

The Wonderful World of Bluth

Welcome to Texas, Elon