SMELL IN MUSEUMS AROUND THE WORLD

 Musings Abroad | Jingshu Helen Yao

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With a new semester starting, I began several new courses. For Dr. Hooley McLaughlin’s Curating Science course, we were asked to keep a smell journal, a daily recording of odours and fragrances around us. While the idea of documenting scent is rather interesting, the assignment also made me realize that olfaction — sense of smell — might be underrated among all of our sensory organs. In school, we were often taught that human olfaction is inferior to many animals due to evolutionary reasons. Compared with vision, hearing, and touch, our ability to smell seems to be less salient. Though I imagine the loss of smell could bring potential problems to our daily lives, those problems seem less severe than the loss of sight or hearing. However, during my research for the smell journal, I came across many recent studies that suggested human olfaction is much more powerful than previously thought and in some cases even compatible with that of dogs. This discovery made me interested in how smells and our abilities to smell are presented in the museums, from both scientific and nonscientific angles. 

   Visitors sniffing scent sample at museum | Getty Image

 

The most recent news about "smell museums" is surrounding the creation of Odeuropa. The project aims to research smell in the context of both human biology and computer science. In November 2020, Odeuropa received a $3.4 million grant from European Union as a part of the Horizon 2020 Programme. The project will make use of AI to research the documentation of smell between the 16th and 20th century. Their mission is to create an online museum of smell and preserve the olfactory heritage of Europe. 

    Odeuropa Historical Smell Project | Yahoo News

“In Search of Lost Scents” is an exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam in the Netherlands. It is the PhD project of Caro Verbeek, whose primary interest is to study the use of smell as a medium of art, especially among futurists and surrealists. The exhibition features smell in historical arts, which were distributed to visitors by facilitators on strips of test paper. A scentman, the artist who uses smell as the method of artistic expression, also performed on site. It was an eye-opening experience for the visitors and an interesting application of Verbeek’s study. 

    Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam | Getty Image

Other than treating smell as an object, it can also be used as a tool to create a more accessible museum space. In “Seeing by Smelling,” Caro Verbeek explains the ways in which smell, touch, and storytelling could facilitate the interpretation of visual art for low sighted people. For example, the smell of myrrh was added to the exhibition of the 'Adoration of the Magi' painting. Myrrh is not only an element presented in the painting, offered to Jesus by the three kings, it was also burnt in ritual to honor kings and gods. Adding the smell to the storytelling allows visually impaired participants to establish a connection to the artwork. Even for visitors who have no visual accessibility needs, the element of smell created a multi-sensory experience. Verbeek quoted neuro-scientist Richard Stevenson who says “scents are known to elicit intense historical sensations... even more so than images or sounds.”

THE NOSE KNOWS: HISTORIC SCENTS AS INTANGIBLE HERITAGE

 Heritage Moments | Madison Carmichael 

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There are certain smells that stick with you. The chemical tang of chlorine transports me to a childhood of community centre swimming pools. One particular kind of tea takes me back to the early mornings of my undergrad, where I bought that very specific tea from student-run coffee shops for a neat $1.80 entirely too often. Smells remind you of people, places, and things, or perhaps an entire experience. As I’ve hinted, they can be intensely nostalgic. It is that very effect of odours – be it physical, psychological, or emotional – that inspires Cecilia Bembibre, a researcher at the UCL Institute for Sustainable Heritage, to argue that odour influences the way that we engage with history and that, as a result, experiencing the smells of the past can enrich our understanding of it and allow us to engage with our history in a more emotional way. 

I stumbled onto her research project eons ago – i.e., back in January – in an article written for the BBC by Miguel Trancozo Trevino. The title snatched my attention from the start: “The people trying to save scents from extinction.” How dramatic, I thought, how exciting. But what was more exciting was the recognition of smell as a form of intangible heritage and its attendant question: if smells could be cultural heritage, how might we identify, protect, and conserve them?

Bembibre's research focuses on the preservation of smells. (Source)

There are certain scents that threaten to disappear from common, olfactory parlance. The smell of old books, for example, is paradoxically threatened by their own decay and efforts to preserve them; as they disappear into temperature-controlled vaults, accessed by only a select few, public access and experience of that scent wanes. 

But this is not a matter solely confined to old books. Similar concerns are raised over any number of historic ephemera. Bembibre’s research works to develop techniques to recover “extinct” scents from the past and to preserve those around today for the future. Like a great deal of intangible heritage, scent is often overlooked. Indeed, scent as a form of intangible heritage only really entered the international heritage scene in 2018, when the perfume-making region of Grasse in France applied to UNESCO for the recognition of their olfactory traditions as intangible heritage. As such, the cultural significance of scents is often tied to place, as the smells and sounds associated with a site can be included as part of the site’s aesthetic value, therefore marking those scents and sounds as an intangible property of that tangible heritage. But much in the way of Grasse, the cultural significance of scent can also be tied to aspects of cultural heritage like tradition and language.

The Pays de Grasse is well-known for its perfume since the 18th-century. (Source) 

Bembibre’s work to preserve scent is a marriage of chemistry and interpretation. One method includes exposing a polymer fibre to the odour, allowing for the smell-causing chemical to stick to it. From there, that sample can be analyzed in a lab. Another separates and identifies the compound from the gas sample. And a third uses the nose itself, consulting with panels to describe the scents or with expert “noses” – often perfumers or scent designers. Bembibre states that the human element is critical; if these scents are to be preserved for the future, then our experience of them is just as important as their chemical composition. 

With these methods, she has extracted the smells of old leather gloves, ancient books, and mould. She’s also worked to reinterpret the scent of potpourri from 1750 and the old books housed in St. Paul’s cathedral.

A peek into their process. (Source)

In her paper on this subject, the smell of historic paper was used as a case study. The smell of historic paper, or old books, is ubiquitous; second-hand bookstores, or else the very unvisited stacks of a university library, are rife with such a smell – which Bembibre identifies as “a combination of grassy notes with a tang of acids and a hint of vanilla over an underlying mustiness.” Through two different routes, she sought to recreate that very smell. Using the methods listed above, she produced a literal chemical recreation of the scent. The other was “an intuitive interpretation” by perfumer Sarah McCartney. 

Bembibre then asked panels to identify which smell resembled an old library best. She was surprised by their response, because it was nearly split. In Trevino’s article for the BBC, she added that if anything, more people chose the interpreted scent rather than the extracted one. 

And so comes a question of authenticity that has no easy answers. If an artist’s reproduction can evoke an olfactory experience to the same degree as a chemical mimic, is it then necessary to duplicate a scent at its chemical level? Conversely, if the smell is not the precise chemical makeup of the original scent, is it truly authentic?

The astonishing amount of candles that mimic the smell of old books and libraries speaks to their cultural significance. (Source)

Putting that aside, here’s another difficult question: which smells should be preserved? It’s a question as political and pressing as any that currently concerns any GLAM institution’s collecting policy. 

There’s a feeling that the significance of scent ought to be concerned with how they are associated with people and their values, or how they are associated with collective memory. These values and memories are many and multifaceted – historic, aesthetic, cultural, scientific, communal, emotional – and determining their importance would necessitate consultation with both experts and communities. The eventual creation of any archive of smells would need to be incredibly mindful of power and privilege, and how that factors into what is preserved and what is not. 

Our knowledge of the past is odourless, according to Bembibre. But on her website, she also poses the question: what smell would you take into the future? What smell would you like to see preserved? Give it a think, and think too on how such considerations may transform the landscape of cultural heritage as we move into that future. 

SCENTS AND SENSIBILITY

MUSEUM INNOVATIONS

BY CASSY KIST

Museums have always been seeking new and interesting ways to tell history and stories. Whether that be through interactive digital components, images, objects, audio etc. - the list is endless. But lately I have been reading about multi-sensory exploration and how to some, especially curators touching is vital to understand and appreciate an object. However, another sense beyond hearing, seeing and touching has also been explored in museums and art pieces. Scents and smell have the potential to create not only excitement and intrigue, but also facilitate new forms of interpretation within museums. Scents tends to be excluded in history narratives and documented events, yet they are important details with the capacity to reveal aspects of time, space and context. If you recall a memory, maybe even walking down Bloor street, a multitude of smells will assault your conscious - maybe Chinese food, coffee or smoke; all these reveal something about the modern day Toronto city context.

Some Historians argue that scents even vanishing ones, are a pivotal part of history and should be preserved. Does that mean we should try to preserve the smell of the modern day theatre? Shopping mall or god forbid gym? Perhaps! While some scents might be unappealing they can reveal details related to time and place and thus, help narrate the tale of everyday life.

An after hours culture festival in the UK (Culture 24), encourages British museums to use scents at their events and in their exhibit spaces, allowing visitors to interact with museum objects in new and unique ways. According to Culture 24, you can animate collections with scent, alter perceptions and create opportunities for new interpretation. Furthermore, scents also create imagery, influence emotions and when shared between people, create connections and discussions.

But how can museums use or reconstruct scents to tell the tales of a historic past through exhibits and objects?

Source

One can look to the National Museum of Singapore for inspiration. The museum hired a perfume artist to create different scents that would bring to life their 700 Years exhibit by creating connections between visitors, the objects and their context pertaining to segments of Singapore’s history. Each era within the exhibit was complimented and encapsulated by 12 scents; one of these, a scent called Fear was fabricated out of musk and ammonia for the era representing Japanese occupation during WW2. Other scents such as the 8 Cent Meal, was created to represent the meals that social welfare departments handed out during the post-war years. This scent included passion fruit, coconut milk and vanilla beans; ingredients which the perfume artist researched in collaboration with the museum over 4-5 months.

Within the 700 years exhibit. Source

This added exhibit detail may cause complications if museums are to become serious in not only using scents but creating them. For example, what scents do curators use to enliven an exhibit and how do they decide which scent combinations will be an accurate representation? Staff may need to research the period, event or person they are representing and decide what scents will work to the advantage of the exhibit themes. Simple raw ingredients like cinnamon or musk might suffice or if representing a complex olfactory context, say perhaps an Egyptian ritual, one can consult an olfactory historian.

A what??? 

Olfactory historians are scholars who have researched scents that have been documented or referenced to over the past centuries. On the other hand, if wanting to compliment a display of Egyptian scent bottles, a curator may decide to use a 3,500-year-old perfume once worn by Pharaoh Hatshepsut and reconstructed by scientists and archaeologists.

At the end of the day no matter the research or choices that the curators make, visitor interpretation is always subjective. That being said, even if a scent doesn’t completely convey the curator’s intention, they can still connect people, place and things, bringing collections and narratives to life.

Of course with every new interaction there is always potential risks, such as how scents can affect objects and if they could cause collections to become inaccessible to people allergic to scents. Some scents might be naturally repugnant to some and interpretations of scents in relation to objects may distract from the exhibit themes.

Morrison smelling books (Source).

On the other hand there are people who are firm believers in the power of scent and their ability to not only entice reflection and discussion, but also give satisfaction. Ask Rachael Morrison who spent 3 years smelling books in the MoMA library as an art piece.

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