Witnessing Olfactive History: Chandler Burr and The Art of Scent 1889-2012 Exhibit at The Museum of Arts & Design

In my day job as a pharmaceutical research chemist it is often hard to talk about the work I am doing as it is often technical and hard to summarize succinctly. That is why we all really enjoy working on what we call “Grandmother projects”. Those are projects which are so easy to explain what we are doing that we can even get our grandmothers to understand it. The same issue happens when those of us who see perfume as something more than a fashion accessory try to explain why we love it for artistic reasons. To go beyond why a fragrance can just smell good and represent something greater that is another difficult thing. There has been nothing available to create a “Grandmother moment” for perfume. With the opening of The Art of Scent 1889-2012 exhibit at the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) in New York City I believe Chandler Burr and the team at MAD have created a moment for olfactory art which gives it the opportunity to be seen in a new light.


Heading to the gala opening of the exhibit I was nervous. Mr. Burr has been telling me everything that this exhibit was going to be but what if it wasn’t? As the elevator rose to the 4th floor of the museum I think I held my breath a bit as the doors opened. What greeted me was a projected text on the floor which told me to walk up to an indentation in a wall and inhale deeply. As I did that I could sense a tiny puff of air and then I immediately smelled Jicky, fragrance number one of twelve. Next to the experience station there was a typical gallery description naming the artist Aime Guerlain, followed by a short description of Jicky as it applies to Olfactory Art in simple easy to understand plain language. There are 11 more stations along the stark white wall and you move through chronologically until you end with Untitled by Daniela Andrier. As someone who has spent my time loving perfume there wasn't anything here I had not smelled before but this experience of leaning in to a blank slate and letting the olfactory art come to you challenged my way of thinking about it.


One thing that needs to be clear about the twelve fragrances Mr. Burr chose is these are not his Top 12 best fragrances of all time. These are exemplars of different aesthetic schools which are meant to give the casual sniffer and the experienced perfume lover something to think about and that is what the best exhibits do; they give you something to think about. I know I am looking forward to future discussion about whether Jean-Claude Ellena is the Grandmaster of Luminism and whether Osmanthe Yunnan is the best example from Mr. Ellena’s body of work. The beauty of this exhibit is it provides the foundation for novice and aficionado alike to have that discussion.


For the more advanced olfactory art admirer there are two very special additions to the exhibit. One is in a room off the main gallery where there is a table with all twelve of the perfumes in a shallow glass dish and blotters to allow you to dip in and experience them on a little longer time frame as they develop on the paper. After you have picked your strips you are encouraged to go to a tablet at the end of the table and choose an adjective from column “A” and a noun from column “B” ; the up to the minute crowd sourced descriptions are projected at the other end of the room. On opening night you can see Angel was mostly described as “edible dessert” but calling it “voluptuous fruit” or “revolting money” seems to also show that even in this crowd Angel is a love it or hate it experience.


The other quite fascinating piece is along the wall in this gallery where there are slots which look as if they are sticking their tongue out at you. As you come to the first slot you see the tongue is in reality a card which you can pull out. On the card it says “Tresor Mod 1 1990 Sophia Grojsman”. As you move down, taking each new card, you move through the creative process Ms. Grojsman entered while working her way towards the final version of Tresor. This is akin to seeing the sketches of a visual artist as they lead up to a final creation hung on a wall. This was easily my favorite part of the entire exhibit. Each card contains a bit of explanation on Ms. Grojsman’s aim and then you pull a strip and smell it. This is something only industry insiders are usually privy to and it is here on display for us to learn from. Standing at the end of the row sniffing Tresor and having experienced the journey to get there was inspiring.


For any reader of this blog if you are going to find yourself in New York City over the next three months, the show runs until February 24, 2013; I think you need to take an hour out of your visit and experience this. That is not going to be possible for many of you and so there is a way to make the exhibit come to you. The catalog of the exhibit contains 5mL atomizers of 11 of the 12 perfumes, only Chanel No. 5 is not included. There is an accompanying book of essays written by Mr. Burr which explain the aesthetic olfactory art movements and these perfumes’ places within those categories. The catalog is a limited edition of 1,000 numbered pieces and is available at this link on the MAD website.


As the exhibit continues Mr. Burr is having a number of ancillary efforts going on simultaneously. One of my favorite is Ralf Schwieger who is acting as an “artist in residence” at the museum every Thursday from 10AM-5PM through mid-December. If you visit you can talk with the artist as he designs a “ginger and mint” fragrance from Mr. Burr’s creative direction. When you go Mr. Schwieger has on display the latest efforts as he works towards a finished product. In speaking with Mr. Schwieger at the opening he conveyed to me how much he has been enjoying the interaction with the visitors and the very insightful questions and conversations he has been having.

There are also monthly talks in the theatre at MAD and the next one is by Carlos Benaim on December 13 as he talks about the development of one of his most recent creations Viktor & Rolf Spicebomb. These talks will continue even after the exhibit closes in February. On November 29 Mr. Burr will lead a tour of The Art of Scent.

I know I will be attending the exhibit a couple more times because I really want to experience it in the complete quiet of a gallery setting without a few hundred people around me. I am pretty sure my grandmother would have enjoyed it, too.

All photographs by Ric Kallaher, Courtesy of The Museum of Arts and Design.

Mark Behnke, Managing Editor

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5 comments

  • For those of us who won’t be able to see the exhibit thank you for this post
    History in the making for the art of fragrance
    Do you know why 5 wasn’t included?
    I also loved the interactive nature of attendees expressing their thoughts
    What is art?
    It must move us or provoke us
    Angel as being a great example of Art
    Edible dessert or revolting money
    Ralf Schwieger is a perfumer I learned about through your interview and oh how I wish I could attend a class

  • I’m sitting here laughing because yours is the first virtual tour of this exhibit that I finally understand. I’m of grandmother age, and see, the grandmother explanation worked! I think the ability to smell a fragrance’s development is genius. Thank you for the tour.

  • I wonder if any exceptional fragrances that are good examples of olfactory art will be included if their company is not a sponsor
    How much of this exhibit is commerce over art?

  • Just in time for the holiday shopping season! Who wouldn’t want to buy their loved ones “masterpieces of olfactory art”–for the price of mainstream mass-marketed fragrances! Sigh.