Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

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

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

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

No Gogh!

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

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

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

The Last Book Sale

Giant Steps

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

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

The Image in the 21st Century

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

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

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

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

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

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

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

The Catastrophe Guru

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

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

“Trapped” in the Limelight

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Welcome to Texas, Elon

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

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

Robert Irwin in Marfa

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

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

The Clothes that Make the Man

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

What Will Become of the Library?

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

Dario Robleto artist profile

Unveiling “Austin”

Wall Flowers

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

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

The Wonderful World of Bluth

The Great Mellowing

Lives in Limbo

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure