Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

The Last Book Sale

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

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

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

What Will Become of the Library?

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

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

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

Welcome to Texas, Elon

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

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

The Great Mellowing

The Catastrophe Guru

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

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

The Wonderful World of Bluth

Lives in Limbo

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

The Image in the 21st Century

Wall Flowers

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

“Trapped” in the Limelight

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

Dario Robleto artist profile

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

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

The Clothes that Make the Man

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

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

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

No Gogh!

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

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

Giant Steps

Robert Irwin in Marfa

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

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

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

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

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

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Unveiling “Austin”