Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

The Wonderful World of Bluth

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

The Last Book Sale

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

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

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

Dario Robleto artist profile

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

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?

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

No Gogh!

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

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

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

Wall Flowers

What Will Become of the Library?

The Image in the 21st Century

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

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

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

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

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

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

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

The Catastrophe Guru

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

Lives in Limbo

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

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

Giant Steps

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

The Great Mellowing

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

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Robert Irwin in Marfa

The Clothes that Make the Man

“Trapped” in the Limelight

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

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

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

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

Welcome to Texas, Elon

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

Unveiling “Austin”