Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

The Image in the 21st Century

What Will Become of the Library?

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?

Robert Irwin in Marfa

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

Giant Steps

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

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

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

The Wonderful World of Bluth

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

The Last Book Sale

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

Lives in Limbo

The Catastrophe Guru

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

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

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

Unveiling “Austin”

Dario Robleto artist profile

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

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

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

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

No Gogh!

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

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

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

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

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

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

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

“Trapped” in the Limelight

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

The Clothes that Make the Man

The Great Mellowing

Welcome to Texas, Elon

Wall Flowers

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

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