Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

The Catastrophe Guru

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

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

Unveiling “Austin”

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

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

The Image in the 21st Century

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

The Great Mellowing

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

“Trapped” in the Limelight

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

Dario Robleto artist profile

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

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

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

No Gogh!

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

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

What Will Become of the Library?

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

Giant Steps

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Welcome to Texas, Elon

Robert Irwin in Marfa

Wall Flowers

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

Lives in Limbo

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

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

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

The Last Book Sale

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

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

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

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

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

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

The Wonderful World of Bluth

The Clothes that Make the Man

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince