Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

Giant Steps

Robert Irwin in Marfa

No Gogh!

Welcome to Texas, Elon

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

“Trapped” in the Limelight

The Image in the 21st Century

The Catastrophe Guru

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

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

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

Wall Flowers

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

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

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

What Will Become of the Library?

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

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

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

Lives in Limbo

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

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

Dario Robleto artist profile

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

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

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

The Clothes that Make the Man

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

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

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

The Wonderful World of Bluth

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

The Last Book Sale

Unveiling “Austin”

The Great Mellowing

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

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

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

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

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

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