Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

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

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

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

Dario Robleto artist profile

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

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

The Wonderful World of Bluth

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

Lives in Limbo

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

Unveiling “Austin”

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

Wall Flowers

The Last Book Sale

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

Giant Steps

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

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

What Will Become of the Library?

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

The Clothes that Make the Man

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

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

The Catastrophe Guru

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

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

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

Robert Irwin in Marfa

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

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

Welcome to Texas, Elon

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

The Image in the 21st Century

“Trapped” in the Limelight

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

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

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

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

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

The Great Mellowing

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

No Gogh!

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince