Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

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

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

The Clothes that Make the Man

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

“Trapped” in the Limelight

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

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

Lives in Limbo

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

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

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

The Catastrophe Guru

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

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

Giant Steps

The Image in the 21st Century

Dario Robleto artist profile

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

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

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

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

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

Welcome to Texas, Elon

The Last Book Sale

Robert Irwin in Marfa

The Wonderful World of Bluth

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

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

Unveiling “Austin”

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

The Great Mellowing

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

Wall Flowers

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

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

No Gogh!

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

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

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

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

What Will Become of the Library?

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

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

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)