Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

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

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

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

“Trapped” in the Limelight

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

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

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

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

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

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

The Clothes that Make the Man

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

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

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

Giant Steps

Wall Flowers

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

The Last Book Sale

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

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

No Gogh!

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

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

Dario Robleto artist profile

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Robert Irwin in Marfa

The Great Mellowing

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

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

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

The Wonderful World of Bluth

Lives in Limbo

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

Unveiling “Austin”

The Catastrophe Guru

What Will Become of the Library?

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Welcome to Texas, Elon

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

The Image in the 21st Century

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

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

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

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself