Across the hall, rooms give way to enormous white cubes in ''Medicine Now,'' where visitors can examine works of art and science exploring current medical issues, such as the sequencing of the human genome.
In an effort to encourage dialogue, many of the articles in the permanent exhibits feature three audio commentaries from experts in a variety of different backgrounds.
Take the lock of hair believed to be from King George III. The tangled brown and blond fibers sit behind a small window inside one of the walls of the ''Medicine Man'' exhibit. Below the display is a drawer, which, when pulled out, offers three buttons featuring audio opinions from a playwright who wrote about the king's life, a historian who examined the use of hair in art and a scientist who performed experiments on the hair.
''If you're an art historian, a scientist, a medical doctor or a playwright, you'll react to (the exhibits) very differently,'' Arnold said. The multiple commentaries may embolden visitors to express their own opinions on the pieces, engaging in dialogue based on their own perspectives as well as what they learn in the museum, Arnold said.
''We hope to be the house where people come together to share their expertise, rather than pitting one against the other,'' he said.
Case in point is Mark Quinn's ''Silvia Petretti — Sustiva, Tenofivir, 3TC (HIV),'' a sculpture of a woman named Silvia Peretti who was HIV positive. As Quinn combined wax and polymer to create a cast of her body, he added one dose of the retroviral medications she took to battle HIV into the mixture.
''It is full of life, but contains a hint of the fragility of her life,'' Arnold said.