Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

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

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

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

What Will Become of the Library?

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

The Catastrophe Guru

Dario Robleto artist profile

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

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

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

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

Giant Steps

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

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

“Trapped” in the Limelight

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

The Great Mellowing

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

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Lives in Limbo

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

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

The Image in the 21st Century

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

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

Wall Flowers

Welcome to Texas, Elon

Robert Irwin in Marfa

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

The Last Book Sale

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

The Clothes that Make the Man

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

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

The Wonderful World of Bluth

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

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

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

No Gogh!

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

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

Unveiling “Austin”

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?