Scent and memory: why museum visitors remember more when they smell it

Scent and memory: why museum visitors remember more when they smell it

There is a moment that happens in almost every museum scent project I have worked on. A visitor leans towards an artwork — not because they are told to, not because a label invites them — but because something in the air pulls them closer. They stop. They breathe in. And then they turn to the person next to them and say: do you smell that?

That moment is not accidental. It is neuroscience.

Why smell reaches us differently

Every other sense — sight, hearing, touch, taste — is processed through the thalamus before reaching the areas of the brain responsible for emotion and memory. Smell is different. The olfactory system connects directly to the amygdala and hippocampus, bypassing the analytical filter entirely.

This means a scent lands in feeling before it reaches thought. It creates an emotional imprint before the conscious mind has time to evaluate, categorise or dismiss it. And that imprint lasts.

Research consistently shows that memories formed in the presence of scent are recalled more vividly and more accurately than memories formed without it — sometimes years, even decades later. For museums, whose fundamental purpose is to create experiences that stay with visitors long after they leave, this is not a marginal advantage. It is a significant one.

What this looks like in practice

In 2018, I developed a signature scent for Campspace — a platform for outdoor holiday experiences — built around geosmin, the molecule responsible for the smell of earth after rain. The scent was designed to be used during the holiday so that smell and memory could form a direct connection. When visitors returned home and encountered the scent again, the memory of the experience came back completely.

The same principle applies in reverse inside a museum. When a visitor smells something next to an artwork or artefact, that smell becomes permanently linked to that experience. The next time they encounter a similar scent — in a garden, a kitchen, a market — the museum comes back to them.

This is not a side effect of good scent design. It is the goal.

The difference between scent decoration and scent design

Not every use of scent in a museum achieves this. A pleasant ambient fragrance pumped into an entrance hall may improve the mood of visitors — but it does not create meaning. What creates meaning is a scent that is conceptually connected to what is being shown: a fragrance that translates the atmosphere of a painting, the era of an artefact, the emotional core of an exhibition theme.

This is the distinction between scent as decoration and scent as design. The first adds comfort. The second adds comprehension.

At Museum Boerhaave's Foodtopia exhibition, six scents were developed to represent six moments in the history of food innovation in the Netherlands — from the familiar warmth of chocolate to the deeply unfamiliar smell of fried grasshoppers. Each scent was chosen not for pleasantness but for meaning. Visitors did not just learn about food innovation. They encountered it physically, through a sense that bypassed every defence they might have had against the unfamiliar.

At the Museon in The Hague, the deconstructed ingredients of a rose and of cola were presented separately, inviting visitors to discover that the individual components told them nothing about the whole. A scientific concept about the nature of perception — made immediately felt through the nose.

The practical case for scent in your next exhibition

The question museum curators most often ask me is not whether scent works — the evidence for that is well established. The question is whether it is practical.

The answer is yes, with the right approach. Scent systems can be scaled to a single vitrine, a room, or an entire building. Fragrances can be developed from scratch to match a specific concept, or adapted from existing references. Safe, tested ingredients ensure that works on paper, canvas and sensitive materials are never at risk.

The entry point is simpler than most curators expect: one scent, one room, one exhibition. A single olfactory moment that gives visitors something they did not know they were missing — and will not forget after they leave.

Jorg Hempenius is a scent designer based in Andalusia, Spain, with eighteen years of experience creating olfactory experiences for museums and cultural institutions across Europe. Previous clients include the Van Gogh Museum, Mauritshuis, Rijksmuseum Twenthe, and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.

Interested in developing a scent concept for your next exhibition? Get in touch at hola@hermozia.es