Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

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

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

Welcome to Texas, Elon

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

The Last Book Sale

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

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

The Wonderful World of Bluth

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

The Clothes that Make the Man

The Catastrophe Guru

Robert Irwin in Marfa

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

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

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

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

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

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

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

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

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

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

Giant Steps

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

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

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

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

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

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

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Unveiling “Austin”

No Gogh!

What Will Become of the Library?

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

“Trapped” in the Limelight

Wall Flowers

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

The Image in the 21st Century

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

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

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

Lives in Limbo

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

The Great Mellowing

Dario Robleto artist profile

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

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)