Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

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

Robert Irwin in Marfa

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

Giant Steps

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

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

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

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

The Catastrophe Guru

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

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

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

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

Wall Flowers

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

Dario Robleto artist profile

The Last Book Sale

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

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

Lives in Limbo

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

The Image in the 21st Century

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

The Great Mellowing

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

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

Unveiling “Austin”

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

What Will Become of the Library?

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

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

The Wonderful World of Bluth

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

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

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

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

Welcome to Texas, Elon

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

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

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

“Trapped” in the Limelight

No Gogh!

The Clothes that Make the Man