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E very year since 2014, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, has rolled out a summer immersive experience — hallmark crowd-pleasing, Instagrammable moments paired with serious art-world cred. Typically mounted in the sweeping expanse of the MFAH Law Building's Cullinan Hall, this Breaking the Mold: Menil Drawing Institute's Fierce Four 11 A.A.Murakami's Beyond the Horizon, commissioned by and exhibited at M+, Hong Kong, 2024, now on view at MFAH summer, the museum presents "Floating World: A.A. Murakami" in the Millennium Galleries of the Beck Building. With "Floating World," curator Dr. Bradley Bailey expands his range, organizing a four-part transportive contemporary exhibition that takes its name from the show's most singular work. But don't confuse this Murakami duo with Takashi Murakami of the Superflat manga- and anime-inspired movement. A.A. Murakami — married collaborators architect Azusa Murakami and artist Alexander Groves — live between London and Tokyo. Besides their art making under the moniker A.A. Murakami, they are regulars on the international design circuit (including Milan's Salone del Mobile) with their firm, Studio Swine. In a coup for Houston audiences, the MFAH's presentation is not only a first in the U.S., but also the international duo's largest to date. As to what you'll see in the environments conjured by "Floating World," the exhibition evokes classical Japanese gardens, the surface of the moon, a Martian sunrise, and more broadly, clouds, and an underwater realm. The result is a haunting dystopian reality, a dream- like state, where the viewer participates in a pioneering experience described as Ephemeral Tech. Plasma, light, vapor, sound, and even giant bubbles coalesce into a captivating sensory world that redefines Surrealism for our time. Through September 21, mfah.org. Catherine D. Anspon IMAGE COURTESY AND © A.A.MURAKAMI. FILM AND PHOTOGRAPHY ADAM KOVÁŘ AND PETR&CO., MODEL ASHLEY LIN. T he medium of drawing is prized for showing the artist's hand. While the concept goes back to the world's first known drawing — abstract marks in red ochre in the Stone-Age Blombos Cave, South Africa, dateline 73,000 years ago — most think of the Renaissance era for its roll call of masters of drawing: da Vinci, Dürer, Michelangelo, Raphael. Modern and contemporary talents have alternately embraced or challenged the definition of drawing, from de Kooning and Rauschenberg (who famously erased de Kooning's marks on paper) to Warhol (shoes for popular ads) and Serra (monumental wall- sized works formed from black paintstick). The Menil Drawing Institute — founded 2008, with its intimate, light-washed Johnston Marklee-designed building unveiled in 2018 — is dedicated to collecting and exhibiting artists' response to the medium, from the 20th century to today. Now on view, "What drawing can be: four responses," curated by MDI chief curator Edouard Kopp and associate curator Kelly Montana, is the most dynamic of all Drawing Institute exhibitions to date. University of Houston sculpture professor Jillian Conrad is joined by Chicago-based Tony Lewis; Teresita Fernández, who lives and works in Brooklyn; and Viennese artist Constantin Luser, making his American museum debut. The exhibition — four shows in one, with each artist given a gallery to transform — is alternately discrete and lyrical (Conrad's ethereal installation that alludes to long-lost love letters and the constellations) and dystopian and visceral (Fernández's environmentally charged Scorched Earth (Lament) room). Luser's floating brass hanging sculptures resembling "drawings in space" dialogue with deft graphite sketches upon the wall, while Lewis' bold sculptural take on language alluding to a 1965 debate between William F. Buckley Jr. and James Baldwin is charged with the weight of history. Through August 10, menil.org. Catherine D. Anspon Tony Lewis with his installation in "What drawing can be: four responses" at Menil Drawing Institute LAUREN MAREK