How can we incorporate scent to facilitate meaningful connections between works of art and our audiences?
By Joy Li
I researched olfactory experiences, including in-gallery scent interactives and trends in modern perfume spaces. Here, I’ll condense all that I learned and share some of my key takeaways.
What are the goals of olfactory experiences?
Scent readily facilitates a personal connection, something we often aim for in interpretation. One scent can create several distinct visitor responses. The reactions are instinctive and unfiltered, arising from subconscious associations. One of the most popular connections is between scent and memory. People might recall their specific age and where they were when they smelled a particular scent, and it unlocks a sense of nostalgia. The directness of experience makes scent an approachable medium to the everyday visitor who might be intimidated by a museum space. The immediacy of scents can immerse visitors in the museum environment, bringing them closer to the artwork in front of them.
Framing Scent
I’ve categorized the two main approaches in current museum offerings as ‘scent as experience’ and ‘scent as support.’
Scent as experience is where scent is the core part of the experience. Examples of this include exhibiting olfactory art, embedding smell all throughout the space, or creating tours that specifically engage the senses.
Scent as support is when scent is used to bolster objects or ideas. Examples of this include when scents are used as literal translations of what is being displayed—a painting of a flower exhibited with the smell corresponding to the type of flower depicted. Another example is programs involving scent, such as using an exhibition as inspiration to create a scent of your own.
Case Study: Denver Art Museum
Among the case studies I researched, I spent the most time exploring a ‘scent as experience’ installation from the exhibition Near East to Far West: Fictions of French and American Colonialism at the Denver Art Museum (DAM). This exhibition presented more than 80 artworks exploring the many ways that the style and substance of French Orientalism directly influenced American artists. I spoke with Lauren Thompson, the interpretive specialist who worked on this project, to learn more.
Lauren explained that this was the first time she was able to apply scent to a project on a larger scale. The use of scent helped to reinforce the big idea that Orientalism spread through every corner of culture, music, literature, and scent.
She contacted the perfume artist Dana El-Masri around a year in advance, laying out the central idea and themes of the exhibition, in order to give her time and freedom to ruminate on ideas. El-Masri ended up creating two scents for the exhibition titled Sarab and Hawa. She describes them:
“By playing with typical notes popular in French perfumery, and pervading them with scents of everyday life, the first scent (named Sarab) aims to strip away the romanticism associated with a movement that is, at the core, colonial.
To bring a new perspective, the second scent (Hawa) expresses expansion. With the use of fresher notes, we’re guided towards a future away from fantasy that inspires new possibilities and honors forgotten narratives. By challenging the olfactory codes of ‘oriental’ scent, I aim for a narrative closer to reality and away from colonial fantasy.”
In creating suitable vessels for the scents, the exhibition designers considered three elements necessary for their function: they must be easy to open, close automatically in case visitors left them open, and open only wide enough so that the visitors could experience the scent, not enough that they could take the contents out.
These two scents were installed in a reflection area towards the end of the exhibition. In the same area, prompts offered opportunities to respond, with one question asking directly about one of the scents. DAM received many positive responses from museum visitors, with some specifically asking if scent interactives would appear in the future.
Modern Perfume Trends
As interpretation professionals interested in new visitor engagement strategies, we can look for further inspiration outside of museum spaces. I turned to unique perfumeries and took note of the different ways that scents were presented and advertised. Consider this scent titled Carolina from the perfumer Olympic Orchids:
“A sweet floral-gourmand fougere-type scent reminiscent of the American South takes you from a day spent among sun-warmed pine woods, grassy fields, and roadsides sprinkled with wildflowers through lunch in a diner that serves iced sweet tea and fresh-baked banana bread, into a warm, humid night sweetened with the scent of night-fragrant flowers and the persistent undercurrent of tonka-rich tobacco curing in the wooden barns and historic red brick factories. Notes: longleaf pine, hay absolute, magnolia, kudzu flower, tea, honeysuckle, star jasmine, vanilla, tonka, and tobacco leaf.”
This is a great example of scent as nostalgia, illustrating the power of personal ties and scent. When I shared it with my colleagues, they had strong reactions to just the description of this smell. They enjoyed how evocative and immersive the writing was. One colleague suggested that interpretive text could be written in a similar way, suggesting a scent without it even needing to be present.
Where can scent take us?
There is so much untapped potential in olfactory experiences, with enthusiasm from visitors and museum professionals alike. What do you see for the future of these experiences? And what role do you see for scent in your institution?
Joy Li
Joy is an emerging museum professional interested in the intersections of art and technology. They are currently the John Wilmerding Intern in Digital Interpretation at the National Gallery of Art. At the National Gallery, Joy is working on an independent research project on David Drake, auditing online offerings, and developing a public art talk. They have worked as research assistant at Wellesley College and Massachusetts Institute of Technology and as an Anchor Point Fellow at the Lobkowicz Collections.