Art
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Scent of Museums
The scent of a museum is generally considered quiet, idealized and hermetic. Institutions try hard to create sterile moments for the visual and non-touchable to speak aesthetically without the intrusion of other senses (no touching! no smells! no voices please!). Regardless of old or new art, museums often smell like their audiences (often stale le…
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On the Nose: What to Learn from Funk and Fragheads
Happy grad season!! This Odorbet word selection is by Alexandra Segal*, Wesleyan University class of 25, who recently wrote her undergraduate anthropology thesis on perfume and queerness. It received both High Honors and the 2025 Gay, Lesbian, and Sexuality Studies (GLASS) Prize for best research and writing in the field. Alexandra grew up in Los…
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Rhinoferocious
Originally published on Aromatica Poetica. Rhinoferocious – a word to describe those who defend perfumery as an art.“He was courageous and bold in his attempts to dismantle the narrow boundaries of perfume as product to elevate people’s understanding of perfume as an art: in a word he was rhinoferocious.” Rhinographies (rhinography) – the study of…
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The Scent Seller
(image: Pietro Longhi, The Scent Seller, ca. 1741. Ca’ Rezzonico, Venice) When it comes to words and perfume, generally the words are devised around strictly hedonic terms, to “like” and to “not like”, and a rainbow of positive, market-driven descriptors. Is it possible to reconsider and add new dimensions to the seductive act of artifically…
Odorbet 