What you don’t do to bring people to museums
What does not invent, to drag people into museums. After opening the doors to nudists happy to feel, by virtue of the Adam’s costume adopted for the occasion, artworks among the artworks, now it is the turn of the perfumed exhibitions. Paintings to see and smell, in short.
Everybody at the Barber Institute in Birmingham for the unique experience, as today it is used to say in front of crazy dishes proposed by starred chefs, or immersive exhibitions that catapult the visitor inside the opera, making him wander like a ghost within the places depicted.
We go to multimedia exhibitions as to the castle of the witches at the rides, in search of emotions as strong as fictitious. It must be said, however, that although extravagant, “the experience” offered by the British institution now rests on solid roots.
Christina Bradstreet, curator of the fragrant exhibition—“Scent and Art of the Preraphaelites,” until January 26th—is a master in this field. In 2022, she published with Penn State University Press Scented Visions: Smell in Art 1850-1914.
Starting point: the unchallenged smell that dominates in the cities and houses of Victorian England. A mixture of sulphur, coal, industrial discharges into rivers, and human excreta spilled on roads poisons the air. Urge a perfume for self-defense.
It is the time when the maître parfumeur triumphs, with fragrances, true to the truth, for nauseating intensity equal to the surrounding stench. But the stench is unbearable, and who can runs to sprinkle the body (often without washing) with expensive essences. With the result of offending even more own and others’ nostrils.
Against the backdrop of such a smelly society, Pre-Raphaelite painting stands out, with depictions of fairy gardens, with an abundance of flowers and plants evoking olfactory antidotes. This is the reading of the Brotherhood by Bradstreet and the consequent idea to accompany the vision of paintings with diffusers designed by Puig (sponsor of the event).
So, it will be enough to put a finger on the device to be flooded by the smell of roses in front of Evelyn de Morgan’s Medea, freshly cut grass in front of John Everett Millais’ The Blind Girl, of the incense in front of A Saint of the Eastern Church by Simeon Solomon.
There is reason to be stunned. Power of the perfume that reaches the hippocampus, and from here inebriates, seduces, lifts the veil on memories faded in time. Proust, after smelling the madeleine, will write the seven volumes of the Recherche.
We, suffering from headaches due to excess of effluent, will settle for much less.
