WASHINGTON (AP) -- Visitors checking out a sculpture exhibit now at the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum are likely to find the modern art moving -- even if it's at a snail's pace.When the half-dozen live snails in the exhibit move at all, they move very little.The snails are only a small part of a show that opened on Thursday, including some of the museum's recent acquisitions.Housed in a glass case without their shells and with two cabbages for sustenance, the snails are part of a sculptural installation called "palimpsest." It's a librarian's name for a manuscript hard to decipher because one layer of writing has been erased and another layer written over it.This "palimpsest" consists of a whole room about 14-feet high, all walls covered from floor to ceiling with hundreds of little rectangular notes in small handwriting, which seem to be parts of several women's autobiographies."I remember when I was nine years old how frightened I was the first time I stepped on an escalator...,," says one."When I was 19, life was dark...," says another."The first time I had sex was very disappointing... I cried all night," confides a third.Olga Viso, director of the Hirshhorn, did not explain the meaning of the object called "palimpsest" in her introduction to the show for reporters."I won't say much about it," she said. "You have to experience it."The artist, Ann Hamilton, 49, of Lima, Ohio, did not appear at the briefing.Tacked to the walls with map pins, the notes flutter slightly in the breeze from an electric fan placed above the door to the room."It is really lovely," said Gabriel Einhorn, chief publicist for the Hirshhorn.The show as a whole is called "Gyroscope" -- after the mounted wheel that can spin in any direction, used in modern steering systems.Members of the staff explained that the exhibit, occupying all the museum's galleries, has rearranged its treasures so they can be viewed in a variety of different ways instead of just chronologically. The hope is that new relationships perceived among them will enable visitors to view them in different perspectives.There's a new "black box" theater without seats where films can be projected or actors positioned in many different directions. It makes its debut with five shorts by Hiraki Sawa of Japan, black-and-white digital works set in his own apartment. They feature teapots that magically grow legs and toy airplanes that fly from room to room."Gyroscope" will be on view through January 2006. Admission is free.Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.