Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

The Catastrophe Guru

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

The Image in the 21st Century

The Last Book Sale

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

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

Dario Robleto artist profile

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

The Wonderful World of Bluth

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

The Great Mellowing

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

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

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

No Gogh!

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

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

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

Unveiling “Austin”

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

Robert Irwin in Marfa

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

The Clothes that Make the Man

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

“Trapped” in the Limelight

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

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

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

Welcome to Texas, Elon

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

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

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

What Will Become of the Library?

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

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

Lives in Limbo

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

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Giant Steps

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

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

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

Wall Flowers

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu