Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

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

The Clothes that Make the Man

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

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

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

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

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

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

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

What Will Become of the Library?

Robert Irwin in Marfa

Lives in Limbo

Welcome to Texas, Elon

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

The Last Book Sale

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

The Wonderful World of Bluth

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

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

No Gogh!

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Dario Robleto artist profile

Wall Flowers

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

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

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

The Catastrophe Guru

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

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

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

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

The Great Mellowing

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

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

“Trapped” in the Limelight

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

Giant Steps

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

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

Unveiling “Austin”

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

The Image in the 21st Century

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

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment