Sure, Austin has music and quirkiness, but if you want to talk about Texas's artistic center, it's Houston. The city's museums are so sprawling in size and topic—from the century-old Museum of Natural Science to the MFA Houston, the largest cultural institution in the southwest—the museum district divided them up into four walkable zones. Houston just added another notch to its mighty big cultural belt with news that the Menil Collection—a free 30-acre neighborhood of art centers—is expanding, again, with a 30,000-square-foot Drawing Institute set to open November 3.

The Drawing Institute adds a new layer to the complex, and to Houston's diverse museum landscape. Menil is already well worth traveling for, with its Cy Twombly Gallery, dedicated to the painter's epic multiple-panel works and sculptures; a site-specific Dan Flavin installation of fluorescent-light tubes; the Byzantine Fresco Chapel and the Rothko Chapel; and a collection of 17,000 works of prehistoric and modern art (and plenty of Picassos, Pollocks, and Duchamps). As the first new building on the Menil campus in more than 20 years, the Drawing Institute—designed by L.A.-based Johnston Marklee, known for their angular concrete homes around the world—will be the country's first free-standing building dedicated exclusively to modern drawing. The institute will have a trio of courtyards (many of the Menil's buildings feature outdoor space, despite the Texas heat) and "a design that modulates daylight in a way that both illuminates and protects delicate works on paper," the museum says. What that ultimately looks like: a bright white, rectangular building with angled skylights filtering in plenty of natural light.

While construction and design of the building have been in the works since 2012, the institute's opening exhibit has been on the Menil Collection's mind for more than a decade. The Condition of Being Here: Drawings by Jasper Johns will feature more than 41 of the famed American artist's drawings, tracing the full arc of the 87-year-old's career, from the 1950s, following his favorite motifs (flags, numbers) through the Vietnam War work to some of his present-day drawings. A forthcoming six-volume art tome of the same name, to be released by Menil, will an astounding 800 of Johns' works. Watch This A Day in Austin

If you're planning a trip to Houston just to visit the Menil, there's more than just the Drawing Institute's opening in November to prompt you to push your trip to the fall. The main Renzo Piano–designed building, which houses much of the museum's permanent collection, is closed from February through fall 2018 so the floors can be re-sanded and restored. No official re-opening date for the main building has been released yet, but the museum's other buildings (the Rothko and Byzantine Fresco chapels, the stellar bookstore, and the Twombly and Flavin galleries) will remain open. Guide Austin Best Restaurants Best Bars Best Things to Do Best Places to Stay