Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

Lives in Limbo

The Image in the 21st Century

Unveiling “Austin”

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

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

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

The Wonderful World of Bluth

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

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

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

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

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

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

Robert Irwin in Marfa

Welcome to Texas, Elon

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

The Great Mellowing

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

The Catastrophe Guru

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Dario Robleto artist profile

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

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

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

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

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

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

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

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

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

What Will Become of the Library?

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

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

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

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

The Clothes that Make the Man

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

Giant Steps

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

Wall Flowers

“Trapped” in the Limelight

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

No Gogh!

The Last Book Sale

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation