Longwood Gardens

Abstract

Smell, often called the inarticulate sense, challenges the efforts made to describe or represent it, forcing one to fall back on metaphor and simile; so often we find ourselves saying that such and such an odor smells like tea or chocolate. Of the senses smell is the least fully understood or appreciated. The goal, at once pedagogical and sensual, of the exhibition Making Scents: The Art and Passion of Fragrance, was to introduce the public to the science, technology, art, and history of floral and perfume fragrance and to teach visitors, through different kinds of panels, displays, floral arrangements, films, advertisements, objects, and computerized programs, about the complexity of perfume composition and scent creation while affording them the sensual experience of smelling flowers and perfumes in close proximity. This article describes how Making Scents was conceived, planned, organized, and realized over five years of discussion and how problems of presentation and representation involving the volatility and dissipation of scents and the difficulty of describing scents visually, linguistically, and olfactorily were faced and solved by the horticulturists, the designers, and the curator who worked on the exhibition.