Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

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

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

The Great Mellowing

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

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Robert Irwin in Marfa

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

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

The Catastrophe Guru

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

Dario Robleto artist profile

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

Unveiling “Austin”

The Last Book Sale

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

The Clothes that Make the Man

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

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

What Will Become of the Library?

“Trapped” in the Limelight

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

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

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

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

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

Wall Flowers

Lives in Limbo

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

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

No Gogh!

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

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

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

The Wonderful World of Bluth

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

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

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

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

Welcome to Texas, Elon

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

Giant Steps

The Image in the 21st Century