Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

The Clothes that Make the Man

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

No Gogh!

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

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

Robert Irwin in Marfa

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

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

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

Lives in Limbo

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

The Last Book Sale

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

Giant Steps

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

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

Dario Robleto artist profile

“Trapped” in the Limelight

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

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

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

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

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

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

Welcome to Texas, Elon

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

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

The Great Mellowing

Unveiling “Austin”

The Wonderful World of Bluth

The Image in the 21st Century

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

Wall Flowers

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

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

The Catastrophe Guru

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

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

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

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

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

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

What Will Become of the Library?

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor