Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

Welcome to Texas, Elon

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

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

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

The Catastrophe Guru

The Last Book Sale

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

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

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

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

The Wonderful World of Bluth

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

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

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

Unveiling “Austin”

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

The Great Mellowing

What Will Become of the Library?

Lives in Limbo

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

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

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

“Trapped” in the Limelight

The Clothes that Make the Man

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

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

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

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

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

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

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

No Gogh!

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

Giant Steps

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

Robert Irwin in Marfa

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

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

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

Dario Robleto artist profile

Wall Flowers

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

The Image in the 21st Century