Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Robert Irwin in Marfa

Unveiling “Austin”

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

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

The Great Mellowing

No Gogh!

What Will Become of the Library?

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

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

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

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

The Wonderful World of Bluth

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

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

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

Lives in Limbo

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

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

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

“Trapped” in the Limelight

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

The Clothes that Make the Man

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

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

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

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

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

Wall Flowers

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

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

The Last Book Sale

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

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

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

Giant Steps

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

The Image in the 21st Century

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

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

Dario Robleto artist profile

The Catastrophe Guru

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

Welcome to Texas, Elon

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)