Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

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

Wall Flowers

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

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

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Lives in Limbo

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

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

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

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

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

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

What Will Become of the Library?

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

Unveiling “Austin”

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

The Great Mellowing

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

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

The Wonderful World of Bluth

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

The Catastrophe Guru

Welcome to Texas, Elon

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

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

“Trapped” in the Limelight

The Clothes that Make the Man

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

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

Dario Robleto artist profile

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

Robert Irwin in Marfa

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

The Image in the 21st Century

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

Giant Steps

The Last Book Sale

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

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

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

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

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

No Gogh!

Bonnie and Clyde at 50