Artsmellery — Translating Iconic Paintings into Scent

Date: 2017 | Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
 

What if you could smell a painting?
 

In 2017, six iconic works — from Roy Lichtenstein to Piet Mondrian — were translated into scent compositions and presented at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. The project, called Artsmellery, explored a simple but powerful idea: that smell is the most direct route to emotion, and that art experienced through the nose creates a fundamentally different kind of connection.

Each scent was composed to capture the essence of the artwork — its atmosphere, its era, its emotional core — not its literal subject. The result was a series of white canvasses, clean and minimal, where the scent did all the work. Visitors leaned in. They slowed down. They engaged with the art in a way that visual presentation alone rarely achieves.

Scent bypasses the analytical mind. Where a painting can be observed from a distance, a scent pulls you physically closer — and that proximity changes everything about how art is experienced.

Why scent works in museums

Research consistently shows that olfactory stimuli activate emotional memory more directly than any other sense. For museums, this creates a unique opportunity: scent can deepen visitor engagement, extend dwell time, and make exhibitions genuinely memorable long after the visit.

Artsmellery was an early demonstration of this potential — and the response from visitors confirmed it.

Interested in developing a scent concept for your museum or exhibition? Get in touch.