Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

Wall Flowers

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

Lives in Limbo

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

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

The Wonderful World of Bluth

What Will Become of the Library?

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

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

The Great Mellowing

Robert Irwin in Marfa

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

Welcome to Texas, Elon

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

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

Unveiling “Austin”

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

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

No Gogh!

“Trapped” in the Limelight

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

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

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

The Last Book Sale

The Clothes that Make the Man

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

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

The Catastrophe Guru

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

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

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

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

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

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

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

Giant Steps

Dario Robleto artist profile

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

The Image in the 21st Century

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

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

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