Apparently the smells made the museum very nervous! They didn’t want anyone to feel assaulted by having to endure the scent of human hair from a hat, and so on. Personally, I very much enjoyed the pat-’n-sniff wall in the “Specter of the Rose” gallery, which allows a visitor to release the smells that have been lifted from a Paul Poiret dress and pair of House of Drecoll gowns and embedded in the paint.
— The New York Times reviews The Costume Institute’s spring 2024 exhibition, Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion (for which Sissel Tolaas did the interactive fragrances). Read more in At the Met, Sleeping Beauty Wakes Up in the Chemistry Lab.
I had read this article yesterday. I think it is an interesting concept to include olfactory sensory experiences in a museum exhibition. Although this personally sounds unpleasant to me IMO, “attempts to recreate her own…um…body odor as unearthed from her clothes”, referring to old clothing from an oil heiress.
There was a perfume exhibit at Longwood Gardens years ago and there were devices to allow one to smell puffs of various types of fragrances. But, that was all pleasant smells as I recall.
Sissel Tolaas fascinates me…but pleasant smells would not be the sort of thing she would be interested in 😉