Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

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

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

Wall Flowers

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

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

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

The Wonderful World of Bluth

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

The Last Book Sale

The Image in the 21st Century

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

The Catastrophe Guru

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Robert Irwin in Marfa

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

Lives in Limbo

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

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

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

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

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

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

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

Unveiling “Austin”

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

The Clothes that Make the Man

Giant Steps

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

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

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

Dario Robleto artist profile

The Great Mellowing

“Trapped” in the Limelight

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

What Will Become of the Library?

No Gogh!

Welcome to Texas, Elon

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

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

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?