In July, at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, I found myself staring at a garden made of titanium. My girlfriend and I had walked in casually, the way you do when you assume a museum will contain familiar things. Then we saw The Eternal Garden by Taiwanese artist Aka Chen, and any sense of familiarity dropped away. From across the room the installation looks like a scene lifted from a Chinese brush painting: branches, blossoms, small birds placed with a light hand. Up close the softness ...