Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

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

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

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

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

The Great Mellowing

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

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

The Last Book Sale

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

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

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

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

The Wonderful World of Bluth

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

The Clothes that Make the Man

“Trapped” in the Limelight

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

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

Giant Steps

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

Unveiling “Austin”

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

The Catastrophe Guru

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

Robert Irwin in Marfa

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

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

What Will Become of the Library?

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

Lives in Limbo

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

No Gogh!

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

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

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

The Image in the 21st Century

Wall Flowers

Welcome to Texas, Elon

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

Dario Robleto artist profile

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu