Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

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

Lives in Limbo

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

Dario Robleto artist profile

The Great Mellowing

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

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

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

What Will Become of the Library?

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

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

No Gogh!

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

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

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

Unveiling “Austin”

Wall Flowers

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

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

Giant Steps

The Wonderful World of Bluth

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

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

Welcome to Texas, Elon

The Catastrophe Guru

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

The Clothes that Make the Man

Robert Irwin in Marfa

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

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

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

The Last Book Sale

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

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

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

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

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

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

“Trapped” in the Limelight

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

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

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

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

The Image in the 21st Century