Ever wondered what the medieval streets of Paris smelled like? What about love, or the sacred fragrance of religion? A new exhibition in Germany invites visitors to experience history through their noses, by sniffing their way through 81 different fragrances across 37 different galleries. -- 🧶More NTD Programs: https://www.ntd.com/programs?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=SocialM
Ever wondered what the medieval streets
of Paris smelled like? What about love
or the sacred fragrance of religion? A
new exhibition in Germany invites
visitors to experience history through
their noses by sniffing their way
through 81 different fragrances across
37 different galleries.
Scents are purely emotional. The only
sensory stimulus that cannot be
rationally filtered. It goes directly to
the lyic system. It is always immediate
in such a way that it creates emotions.
>> That's really exciting just to smell how
the Parisian back street smelled or now
in this sacred space how everything
smells of incense. Exciting just to
connect art with sense
>> here. It's about infinity in this
artwork. So it's an elevator shaft that
you can basically look into which goes
into infinity. And there we use the
scent of space which we recreated for
NASA so that you can basically smell
infinity.
>> The secret power of scents opens to the
public on Wednesday in the western city
of Dusseldorf. It combines fragrances
with art, taking visitors on a journey
of more than 1,000 years of cultural
history. The exhibition follows a
chronological order from religious
artifacts of the Middle Ages through to
contemporary art of the 21st century.
Scents trigger emotional reactions more
strongly than any other scents. So, it's
no surprise that some visitors almost
retreat in fear when they press a button
in a gallery recreating the smell of
World War I. On the other side of the
fragrance spectrum, there's the Venus in
Adonis painting from 1610 by Flemish
artist Peter Paul Rubin showing two
lovers. The smells diffused here are
dominated by roses and the scent of the
civet, a cat whose scent was considered
erotic in the 17th century, but made
today's visitors turn up their noses in
disgust. Certain smells also connect to
different eras of history. Pressing the
button to release the stench of medieval
Paris made some visitors choke when they
inhald a mix of canalization, mold, and
unwashed bodies. The museum's director
general says the exhibition aims to shed
light on the significance of sense in
religion, politics, art, consumerism,
and science.
