Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

The Clothes that Make the Man

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

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Welcome to Texas, Elon

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

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

No Gogh!

“Trapped” in the Limelight

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

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

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

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

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

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

Wall Flowers

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

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

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

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

The Last Book Sale

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

Giant Steps

The Image in the 21st Century

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

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

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

What Will Become of the Library?

The Catastrophe Guru

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

Dario Robleto artist profile

The Great Mellowing

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

Unveiling “Austin”

Lives in Limbo

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

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

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

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

The Wonderful World of Bluth

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

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

Robert Irwin in Marfa