Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

The Wonderful World of Bluth

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

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

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

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

Lives in Limbo

The Clothes that Make the Man

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

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

Wall Flowers

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

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

The Image in the 21st Century

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

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

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

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

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

Giant Steps

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

Dario Robleto artist profile

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

The Great Mellowing

Robert Irwin in Marfa

What Will Become of the Library?

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

The Last Book Sale

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

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

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

No Gogh!

Unveiling “Austin”

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

Welcome to Texas, Elon

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

“Trapped” in the Limelight

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

The Catastrophe Guru

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

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

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

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

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself