Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

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

Welcome to Texas, Elon

The Image in the 21st Century

“Trapped” in the Limelight

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

Wall Flowers

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

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

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Robert Irwin in Marfa

The Wonderful World of Bluth

Giant Steps

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

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

What Will Become of the Library?

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

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

No Gogh!

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

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

The Last Book Sale

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

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

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

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

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

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

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

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

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

The Clothes that Make the Man

Dario Robleto artist profile

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

The Catastrophe Guru

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

Unveiling “Austin”

The Great Mellowing

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

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

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

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

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

Lives in Limbo