Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

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

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

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

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

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

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

Dario Robleto artist profile

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

Unveiling “Austin”

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

What Will Become of the Library?

The Last Book Sale

Giant Steps

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

Robert Irwin in Marfa

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

The Wonderful World of Bluth

The Image in the 21st Century

Lives in Limbo

Wall Flowers

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

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

“Trapped” in the Limelight

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

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

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

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

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

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

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

No Gogh!

The Clothes that Make the Man

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

Welcome to Texas, Elon

The Catastrophe Guru

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

The Great Mellowing

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

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

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