Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

Dario Robleto artist profile

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

What Will Become of the Library?

The Last Book Sale

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

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

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

Unveiling “Austin”

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

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

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

The Image in the 21st Century

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

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

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Giant Steps

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

The Catastrophe Guru

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

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

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

“Trapped” in the Limelight

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

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

Robert Irwin in Marfa

The Clothes that Make the Man

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

Wall Flowers

The Great Mellowing

The Wonderful World of Bluth

No Gogh!

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

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

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

Lives in Limbo

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

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

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

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

Welcome to Texas, Elon

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

What Will Become of the Paper Book?