German exhibition allows visitors to discover unknown worlds of smells

Ever wondered what war smells like? Or ponder the odor of love, or the stench of medieval Paris, or the sacred fragrance of religion? A new exhibition in Germany allows visitors to discover unknown worlds of smells by sniffing their way through 81 different fragrances across 37 different galleries. The show “The Secret Power of Scents,” which opens to the public on Wednesday at the Kunstpalast museum, in the western city of Düsseldorf, combines fragrances with art, taking visitors on a journey of more than 1,000 years of cultural history. “This exhibition is an experiment-and an invitation for our audience to discover the history of scents with their noses,” said Felix Krämer, the museum's director general.

- 

The exhibition follows a chronological order, from religious artifacts of the Middle Ages through to contemporary art of the 21st century. The various galleries are equipped with scent steles, atomizers and diffusers to create a connection between the art and the smell of a specific time period or cultural context. Waves of myrrh waft through a darkened gallery of Christian wood carvings depicting various scenes from the Bible. Christianity, but also Judaism and Islam used myrrh as a symbol for prayer and purification, the show explains.

Scents evoke direct emotional reactions more strongly than any other sense. So it comes as no surprise that visitors almost retreat in fear when they press a button in a gallery about World War I. The scent released from the diffuser was created by mixing the pungent smell of gunpowder with the metallic odor of blood and sulfur.

"Anyone who has ever experienced war, conventional war, will hate it, because you can actually smell the brutality of war here,” said Robert Müller-Grünow, the show's curator and a leading expert in the field of scent and scent technology. “It’s the first exhibition worldwide to bring scents into a museum in this form, format and scale,” he said.