Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

What Will Become of the Library?

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

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

The Great Mellowing

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

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Unveiling “Austin”

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

“Trapped” in the Limelight

Lives in Limbo

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

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

Robert Irwin in Marfa

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

The Catastrophe Guru

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

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

No Gogh!

Welcome to Texas, Elon

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

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

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

The Image in the 21st Century

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

Dario Robleto artist profile

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

Giant Steps

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

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

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

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

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

The Clothes that Make the Man

The Last Book Sale

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

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

Wall Flowers

The Wonderful World of Bluth

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

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box