Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

Dario Robleto artist profile

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

Welcome to Texas, Elon

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

The Last Book Sale

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

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

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

Wall Flowers

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

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

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

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

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

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

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

“Trapped” in the Limelight

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

Giant Steps

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Unveiling “Austin”

Robert Irwin in Marfa

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

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

The Image in the 21st Century

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

The Great Mellowing

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

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

What Will Become of the Library?

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Lives in Limbo

The Catastrophe Guru

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

The Wonderful World of Bluth

No Gogh!

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

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

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

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

The Clothes that Make the Man

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

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