Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

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

The Wonderful World of Bluth

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

The Last Book Sale

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

The Catastrophe Guru

“Trapped” in the Limelight

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

The Image in the 21st Century

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

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

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

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

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

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Robert Irwin in Marfa

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

Dario Robleto artist profile

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

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

Welcome to Texas, Elon

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

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

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

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

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

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Wall Flowers

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

Lives in Limbo

What Will Become of the Library?

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

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

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

No Gogh!

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

The Great Mellowing

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

The Clothes that Make the Man

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

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

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

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

Unveiling “Austin”

Giant Steps