SCENT AS INTERPRETATION: USING SMELLS IN MUSEUMS— FULL EVENT RECORDING

Full recording of the July 2026 International Themed Smell Day online event

IF YOU COULDN'T ATTEND THE EVENT, NOW YOU CAN GET THE RECORDING.

Three hours with nine practitioners who have actually put scent into public museum spaces — and dealt with everything that came after.

This isn't a perfumery program. It's about scent as interpretation: how curators, educators, and designers use smell to carry a story, open access, and hold a visitor's attention in ways that text and film can't. The speakers came from historic ships, botanical gardens, history museums, theme parks, university research, and augmented reality production. Each one walked through their own project — how it was built, what it cost them, what broke, and what they'd do differently.

You'll hear how the Tall Ship Glenlee in Glasgow built an Arduino-controlled scent delivery system that hands agency to the visitor while keeping the running costs sane. How a Three Little Pigs exhibition in Norway used smell alongside movement and audio to reach young children. How the Missouri Botanical Garden curated an entire exhibition around the range of scents plants produce. How recreating plague pits for public attractions goes wrong in ways nobody anticipates. How the Maryland Center for History & Culture built a six-sense framework into a permanent exhibition. And how the world's first multisensory AR game came together at the Mary Rose Museum — and what production and distribution actually taught the team.

The final session is a forty-minute panel on the problems nobody puts in the press release: conservation risk, accessibility and sensory signage, malodor management, visitor comfort, and the institutional realities of getting any of this approved.

What's included

• Full 3-hour recording, all three topic sessions plus both live Q&A segments
• The complete panel discussion on conservation, accessibility, and risk
• Nine speakers across the UK, US, Norway, and the Netherlands

Speakers
Lauren Henning (The Tall Ship Glenlee) · Prof. Natalia Kucirkova (University of Stavanger) · Nezka Pfeifer (Sachs Museum, Missouri Botanical Garden) · Ailsa Easton (Creative Director, UK) · Margot Kopera (Maryland Center for History & Culture) · Charlotte Mikkelborg (Picture This Productions) · Marie Clapot (sensory museologist) · Andreas Keller (Olfactory Art Keller) · Antje Kiewell (Artphilia) · Jessica Murphy (fragrance historian)

Hosted by the Fragrance Alliance Network. Co-organized by Sofia Collette Ehrich (The Olfactory Contractor) and Liam R. Findlay (International Themed Smell Day), with Gus Romero (Fragrance Alliance Network).

Who it's for
Museum educators and curators, exhibition designers, accessibility and interpretation staff, heritage consultants, and anyone building sensory programming who wants to hear from people three or four projects deep rather than one.