Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

The Last Book Sale

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

The Clothes that Make the Man

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

The Catastrophe Guru

Dario Robleto artist profile

Unveiling “Austin”

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

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

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

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

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

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

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

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

Welcome to Texas, Elon

“Trapped” in the Limelight

The Wonderful World of Bluth

No Gogh!

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

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

Robert Irwin in Marfa

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

The Image in the 21st Century

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

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

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

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

What Will Become of the Library?

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

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

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

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

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

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

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

Wall Flowers

Lives in Limbo

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

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

Giant Steps

The Great Mellowing