Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

The Image in the 21st Century

Wall Flowers

No Gogh!

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

The Great Mellowing

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

Dario Robleto artist profile

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

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

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

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

The Last Book Sale

Robert Irwin in Marfa

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

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

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

What Will Become of the Library?

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

Lives in Limbo

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

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

Giant Steps

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

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

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

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

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

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

Welcome to Texas, Elon

The Catastrophe Guru

The Clothes that Make the Man

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

The Wonderful World of Bluth

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

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

Unveiling “Austin”

“Trapped” in the Limelight

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

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

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

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