Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

The Wonderful World of Bluth

Giant Steps

“Trapped” in the Limelight

No Gogh!

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

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

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

The Image in the 21st Century

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

The Last Book Sale

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

Lives in Limbo

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

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

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

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

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

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

What Will Become of the Library?

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

The Clothes that Make the Man

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

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

The Great Mellowing

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

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

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Dario Robleto artist profile

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

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

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

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

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

The Catastrophe Guru

Unveiling “Austin”

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

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

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

Welcome to Texas, Elon

Wall Flowers

Robert Irwin in Marfa

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

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