Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

The Image in the 21st Century

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

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

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

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

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

No Gogh!

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

Robert Irwin in Marfa

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

Dario Robleto artist profile

The Catastrophe Guru

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

The Great Mellowing

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

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

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

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

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

What Will Become of the Library?

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

Lives in Limbo

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

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

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

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

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

Welcome to Texas, Elon

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

Unveiling “Austin”

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

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

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

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

Wall Flowers

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

The Last Book Sale

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

The Clothes that Make the Man

“Trapped” in the Limelight

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

Giant Steps

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

The Wonderful World of Bluth

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