Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

The Catastrophe Guru

The Image in the 21st Century

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

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

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

The Last Book Sale

No Gogh!

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

The Clothes that Make the Man

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

The Great Mellowing

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

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

Welcome to Texas, Elon

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Unveiling “Austin”

“Trapped” in the Limelight

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

What Will Become of the Library?

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

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

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

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

Wall Flowers

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

Giant Steps

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

The Wonderful World of Bluth

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

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

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

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

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

Lives in Limbo

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

Robert Irwin in Marfa

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

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

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

Dario Robleto artist profile

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

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?