Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

Dario Robleto artist profile

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

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

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

The Catastrophe Guru

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

The Last Book Sale

The Wonderful World of Bluth

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

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

What Will Become of the Library?

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

“Trapped” in the Limelight

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Robert Irwin in Marfa

Lives in Limbo

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

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

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

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

The Image in the 21st Century

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

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

The Great Mellowing

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

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

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Welcome to Texas, Elon

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

Unveiling “Austin”

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

No Gogh!

Giant Steps

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

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

Wall Flowers

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

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

The Clothes that Make the Man

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

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

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

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

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

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

What Will Become of the Paper Book?