Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

Giant Steps

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

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

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

Wall Flowers

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

“Trapped” in the Limelight

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

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

Lives in Limbo

The Clothes that Make the Man

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

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

Unveiling “Austin”

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

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

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

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

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

No Gogh!

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

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

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

The Image in the 21st Century

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

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

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Dario Robleto artist profile

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

The Last Book Sale

Welcome to Texas, Elon

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

The Great Mellowing

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

The Wonderful World of Bluth

What Will Become of the Library?

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

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

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

The Catastrophe Guru

Robert Irwin in Marfa

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

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

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

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

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)