Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

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

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

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

The Catastrophe Guru

The Clothes that Make the Man

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

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

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Dario Robleto artist profile

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

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Robert Irwin in Marfa

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

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

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

The Great Mellowing

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

No Gogh!

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

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

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

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

The Wonderful World of Bluth

Giant Steps

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

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

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

Unveiling “Austin”

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

Lives in Limbo

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

Wall Flowers

“Trapped” in the Limelight

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

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

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

Welcome to Texas, Elon

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

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

The Image in the 21st Century

What Will Become of the Library?

The Last Book Sale