Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

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

Dario Robleto artist profile

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

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

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

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

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

The Clothes that Make the Man

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

What Will Become of the Library?

No Gogh!

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

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

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

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

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

The Catastrophe Guru

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

The Great Mellowing

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

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

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

Lives in Limbo

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

The Last Book Sale

Unveiling “Austin”

The Image in the 21st Century

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

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

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

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

Giant Steps

Welcome to Texas, Elon

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

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

Robert Irwin in Marfa

The Wonderful World of Bluth

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

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

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

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

“Trapped” in the Limelight

Wall Flowers