Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

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

Dario Robleto artist profile

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

The Clothes that Make the Man

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

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

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

No Gogh!

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

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

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

Unveiling “Austin”

The Image in the 21st Century

The Great Mellowing

Lives in Limbo

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

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

The Catastrophe Guru

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

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

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

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

Giant Steps

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

“Trapped” in the Limelight

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

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

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

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

Wall Flowers

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

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

The Wonderful World of Bluth

Robert Irwin in Marfa

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

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

What Will Become of the Library?

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

Welcome to Texas, Elon

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

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

The Last Book Sale

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