Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

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

Robert Irwin in Marfa

Welcome to Texas, Elon

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

Wall Flowers

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

No Gogh!

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

Lives in Limbo

The Great Mellowing

Giant Steps

The Clothes that Make the Man

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

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

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

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

The Image in the 21st Century

The Last Book Sale

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

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

The Wonderful World of Bluth

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

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

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

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

What Will Become of the Library?

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

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

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

“Trapped” in the Limelight

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

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

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

Unveiling “Austin”

The Catastrophe Guru

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

Dario Robleto artist profile

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

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

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

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