Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

No Gogh!

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

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

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

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

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

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

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

The Great Mellowing

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

Giant Steps

The Catastrophe Guru

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

The Clothes that Make the Man

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

Lives in Limbo

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

The Last Book Sale

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Unveiling “Austin”

Robert Irwin in Marfa

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

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

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

What Will Become of the Library?

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

Dario Robleto artist profile

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

The Image in the 21st Century

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

The Wonderful World of Bluth

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

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

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

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

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

Welcome to Texas, Elon

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

“Trapped” in the Limelight

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

Wall Flowers

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0