Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

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

The Catastrophe Guru

Welcome to Texas, Elon

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

Giant Steps

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

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

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

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

Wall Flowers

No Gogh!

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

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

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

Robert Irwin in Marfa

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

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

The Great Mellowing

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

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

The Image in the 21st Century

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

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

The Clothes that Make the Man

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

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

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

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

The Wonderful World of Bluth

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

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

What Will Become of the Library?

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

“Trapped” in the Limelight

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

Lives in Limbo

Dario Robleto artist profile

The Last Book Sale

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

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

Unveiling “Austin”