Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

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

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

“Trapped” in the Limelight

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

Wall Flowers

The Clothes that Make the Man

The Last Book Sale

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

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

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

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

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

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

Giant Steps

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

The Catastrophe Guru

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

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

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

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

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

Dario Robleto artist profile

The Image in the 21st Century

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

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

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

The Wonderful World of Bluth

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

Robert Irwin in Marfa

What Will Become of the Library?

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

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

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

Lives in Limbo

The Great Mellowing

No Gogh!

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

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

Welcome to Texas, Elon

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

Unveiling “Austin”

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

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

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

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?