Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

The Catastrophe Guru

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Giant Steps

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

Welcome to Texas, Elon

Robert Irwin in Marfa

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

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

The Clothes that Make the Man

The Wonderful World of Bluth

The Last Book Sale

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

No Gogh!

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

The Image in the 21st Century

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

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

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

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

Lives in Limbo

Dario Robleto artist profile

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

“Trapped” in the Limelight

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

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

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

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

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

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

The Great Mellowing

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

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

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

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

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

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

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

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

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

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

Unveiling “Austin”

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

What Will Become of the Library?

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

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

Wall Flowers