Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

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

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

The Wonderful World of Bluth

The Great Mellowing

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

Lives in Limbo

Wall Flowers

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

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

The Catastrophe Guru

The Last Book Sale

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

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

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

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

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

Unveiling “Austin”

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

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

No Gogh!

Dario Robleto artist profile

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

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

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Welcome to Texas, Elon

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

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

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

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

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

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

The Image in the 21st Century

“Trapped” in the Limelight

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

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

Robert Irwin in Marfa

Giant Steps

What Will Become of the Library?

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

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

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

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

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

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

The Clothes that Make the Man

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters