Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

Unveiling “Austin”

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

The Great Mellowing

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

Lives in Limbo

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

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

Dario Robleto artist profile

The Image in the 21st Century

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

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

The Wonderful World of Bluth

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

Welcome to Texas, Elon

Giant Steps

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

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

The Clothes that Make the Man

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

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

The Last Book Sale

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

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

No Gogh!

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

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

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

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

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

Wall Flowers

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

What Will Become of the Library?

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

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

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

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

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

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

The Catastrophe Guru

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

“Trapped” in the Limelight

Robert Irwin in Marfa

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

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

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.