Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

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

Giant Steps

Lives in Limbo

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

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

Welcome to Texas, Elon

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

No Gogh!

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

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

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

The Image in the 21st Century

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

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

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

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

“Trapped” in the Limelight

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

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

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

The Great Mellowing

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

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

Unveiling “Austin”

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

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

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

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

Wall Flowers

The Wonderful World of Bluth

Dario Robleto artist profile

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

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

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

The Last Book Sale

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

Robert Irwin in Marfa

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

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

The Clothes that Make the Man

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

What Will Become of the Library?

The Catastrophe Guru