Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

Unveiling “Austin”

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

The Clothes that Make the Man

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

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

Giant Steps

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

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

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

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

Lives in Limbo

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

Welcome to Texas, Elon

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

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

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

No Gogh!

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

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

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

The Image in the 21st Century

Wall Flowers

“Trapped” in the Limelight

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

The Last Book Sale

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Dario Robleto artist profile

What Will Become of the Library?

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

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

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

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

The Catastrophe Guru

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

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

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

The Wonderful World of Bluth

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

Robert Irwin in Marfa

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

The Great Mellowing

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

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

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

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter