Michael Agresta
The Texas Observer
Austin, TX, United States
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Past articles by Mike:
In ‘Keeping House,’ the Unseen Is at the Forefront
Austin-based Veronica Ceci makes timely art about those who clean up other people’s messes. → Read More
How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment
Despite their importance to the Nineteenth Amendment’s eventual ratification 100 years ago, Texas’ suffragists remain relatively unknown. → Read More
The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar
The wildly imaginative Brownsville painter Cande Aguilar fuses pop culture with abstraction, family life, and his love of South Texas. → Read More
Snakes and Ladders
In San Antonio, two artists explore hidden geometries of the city. → Read More
Ancestors in a Strange New Land
In Houston, an exhibit of vibrant, playful Egúngún costumes speaks to Nigerian tradition and migration. → Read More
A New Pray-the-Gay-Away Drama Suggests Conversion is Possible (Just Not the Kind You Think)
Poignant awards-season fare, “Boy Erased” makes the case against the Christian “cure” for homosexuality. → Read More
A San Antonio Art Show Quietly Foregrounds Migrants’ Stories
More people are displaced than ever before — nearly 69 million. The scale of that crisis is hard to grasp, but visitors to "One to Another" will see it in a new light. → Read More
100 Ways to Draw a Line
The edge becomes the center at the Transborder Biennial 2018 in El Paso and Ciudad Juárez. → Read More
In ‘The Atomic Cafe,’ U.S. Cold War Propaganda Comes Out of the Bunkers for the Trump Era
Screening at SXSW on Saturday, the film's Cold War-era footage never feels distant — perhaps because both careless stewardship of the bomb and surreal official propaganda seem to be making a comeback. → Read More
Houston Photo Exhibit Documents First Markers of Modern U.S.-Mexico Border
How strange, David Taylor’s camera seems to say, that this haphazard line has survived nearly 170 years as an international border, when so much else around it has changed. → Read More
How Texas Artists Are Responding to Trump's Wall
"When I’m building spaces, they’re really to invite people in, oftentimes people who are excluded or don’t have access to more traditional art spaces.” → Read More
'Through the Repellent Fence' Celebrates Art that Transcends Borders
In "Through the Repellent Fence," artists speak passionately of the centuries-old importance of cross-border relationships. → Read More
First Major U.S. Show Since 1942 of Cuban Art Comes to Houston
The landmark exhibit Adiós Utopia: Dreams and Deceptions in Cuban Art Since 1950 is at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), from March 5 to May 21. → Read More
Valeria Luiselli's 'Tell Me How It Ends' Is the First Must-Read Book of the Trump Era
The Mexican novelist writes that asylum-seekers come to the U.S. not in search of the American dream, but “to wake up from the nightmare into which they were born.” → Read More
At SXSW, ‘The Work’ Builds Case for Prison Program That Breaks Inmates Down
'The Work' raises important questions about masculinity and violence, but the film’s ties to a controversial men’s movement cloud the picture. → Read More
Houston's FotoFest Puts Environmental Dystopia on Display
FotoFest, Houston’s biennial art photography fair, bears witness to a planet in peril in alternately beautiful and disturbing ways. → Read More
Mark Rothko: Houston's Absent Son
Mark Rothko never visited Houston in his entire life, but the Bayou City displays the personal collection of its beloved-in-absentia son. → Read More
Mark Rothko: Houston's Absent Son
Mark Rothko never visited Houston in his entire life, but the Bayou City displays the personal collection of its beloved-in-absentia son. → Read More
Here Are All 21 Texas Mass Shootings from 2015
Nearly four dozen Texans, including at least six children, have been killed in mass shooting incidents in 2015. But the year's not over yet. → Read More
Catching up with Janis Joplin in 'Janis: Little Girl Blue'
Squint hard enough with modern-day eyes, and Janis Joplin can even start to look like a misunderstood prophet of 21st century sexual politics. → Read More