College of Arts and Science faculty, students explore the artistic power of scent
Freshly brewed coffee. Cut grass. Campfires. Spring flowers. Reading these words may conjure a specific scent in your mind.
Scent is everywhere, and there is a shared experience in how different cultures and individuals use and depict fragrance. A new exhibit currently on display at the Vanderbilt University Museum of Art, titled Scent: Connection, Confrontation, Memory, explores art that captures the olfactory, looking closely at the way smell becomes seen and supported, and how artists from a wide range of cultures have represented it.
The innovative exhibit is a collaborative effort between the museum and three classes in the College of Arts and Science: Exhibiting Historical Art, taught by Senior Lecturer of the History of Art and Architecture and exhibit co-curator Susan Dine; Graphic Design: Systems & Structures, taught by Assistant Professor of the Practice of Art Sarah Dunham; and Histories of Global Urbanism, taught by Collaborative Humanities Postdoctoral Program Fellow Peter Chesney.
The idea for a collaborative exhibit blossomed over two years ago, when Dine met Rachel P. Kreiter, the museum’s then-new curator. Having worked with the museum’s collection previously to support her teaching, Dine realized there was a large collection of Japanese objects related to scent. Curious if there were other non-Japanese objects in the same category, Dine approached Kreiter and asked if they would want to create an exhibition in conjunction with Dine’s class.
Kreiter immediately agreed, and a partnership was born. Looking to broaden this collaboration, Dine and Kreiter reached out to Dunham to see if her class would be interested in creating the visual and marketing assets for the exhibit. Dunham previously worked with the museum to design the visual identity for last fall’s exhibit, Paper Backs: Hidden Stories of European Prints from the Vanderbilt University Museum of Art Collection. Soon after, Chesney, whose expertise is in the sensory humanities, engaged in the project so his class could create scents for the exhibit. This collaboration provided a highly unique and hands-on opportunity for the students in these classes to experience the full range of bringing an exhibit to life—including ideation, design, creation, and implementation.
“This type of experience allowed the students to see the ways that learning expands beyond the classroom walls,” Dine said. “The work of scholars does not exist in a vacuum but can affect the ways the broader public understands histories and, more broadly, humanity.”
Dine’s students studied the relationships between art and aroma in different cultures. Each student selected one object from the exhibit, researched it extensively, wrote a paper on it, wrote short wall labels about it, and brainstormed layout ideas. On the exhibit’s opening night, the students were in attendance wearing “Ask me about my research” stickers to engage visitors in learning more about the objects that they had studied.
“Close visual analysis, archival work, applying theoretical frameworks, and more have allowed our students and wider community to understand these objects in more complex ways,” Dine said. “They also learned very practical skills, such as time management with a multi-component project, collaboration, and what the different practical steps of crafting an exhibition are. This combination of theory and practice is essential in museum work. I think such projects embody the transformative potential of learning in a campus setting.”
In Dunham’s course, Graphic Design: Systems & Structures, students met with the exhibit co-curators, Dine and Kreiter, discussing the goals of the exhibit, how they wanted to communicate their ideas to an audience, and the various pieces that would be on display. The students then worked to create all the graphic materials, including the design of the exhibit walls and the print and digital promotional materials.
“In the studio, a lot of what we’re thinking about is how we can help make visible the ideas behind the exhibition,” Dunham said. “One of the goals of the course is not just that students get a taste for the idea that design is about communicating ideas, but also that design is a very communication-heavy process. It’s not just about making visual things, but it’s about doing that in conversation with other people. For this project, we were in conversation with the curators of the show and with students from other two classes to visualize their ideas around scent.”
Through this process, Dunham’s students learned various design skills, such as sketching, working with typography, and prototyping, but also how to work in collaboration with others, how to turn verbal discussions into visuals, and how to respond to feedback from clients.
The third piece in the collaboration came from Chesney’s class, Histories of Global Urbanism, where students worked to create tangible scents that represented different seasons in two global cities for the exhibit. Chesney developed a group project for his class in which students replicated smells from the histories of Shanghai and Mexico City.
“The curators are both art historians, but they expressed an interest in the inter-sensorial capture of smell as an image in visual artifacts and as a usage in material objects from Japan,” said Chesney. “I was thrilled to have my class participate in the exhibit, adding interactive physical scents to the display.”
Over the course of the semester, Chesney’s students were presented with examples of objects that smell, from essential oils to raw herbs. From there, they performed readings and research on Shanghai and Mexico City to help determine which themes should be highlighted in the exhibit.
“The best part of this experience for me was walking in for the first time a few days before the opening and experiencing Sarah Dunham’s brilliant setting for the eight scents that my students and I had designed,” Chesney said. “Her class amazed me with their capacity to remake my vision into something better than I could have possibly envisioned. Their design has the power to advance the field of sensory studies through a nonverbal humanistic intervention that I never could have made via reading or writing.”
Through this collaboration, students gained valuable knowledge of museum processes and direct experience in crafting an exhibit. Both Dine and Kreiter agreed that they would like to explore more immersive opportunities for students, especially as it applies to the Museum Studies minor, soon to be the Museum and Market Studies minor, for which Dine’s class is an elective option. The minor offers students comprehensive knowledge of museum practices and the business of art while developing practical skills through hands-on experiences and interdisciplinary coursework.
“As the curator of the museum, one of my big goals is to experiment and try new things,” Kreiter said. “The number of students who touched this exhibit before it even opened was a significant milestone for me, because it represents that our museum has the freedom to try different things and see what works. All these partnerships, student integrations, and faculty engagement have really developed organically—just from having like-minded colleagues in the same building who have partnered with the museum to get their work done. It has also just been fun. Being able to go to a class multiple times throughout the semester and have relationships with those students and start to learn a little bit more about them has been really cool. I’d say making this exhibition has been one of the highlights of my time at Vanderbilt so far.”
Connor Wolfe, a senior in Dine’s class studying English literary studies and history of art, said this experience helped deepen his understanding of art and the histories they have, as well as museum systems.
“It has been really incredible this semester learning about artworks as objects that have complex lives and histories with their owners and the events that they’ve lived through,” Wolfe said. “I feel like when you think of museums, you really think of them as sterile spaces that try to depict the objects as is. However, learning about artworks as things that are themselves essentially active—that have histories of being touched, of being smelled, of depicting smells and the ways that people interact with the world—has really deepened my interaction with art and made me think more comprehensively about how artwork is affected by the environment and affects its environment.”
Justin Schwab, a sophomore in Dine’s class studying culture, advocacy, and leadership and history of art, said he gained a deeper understanding of the background work needed to build an exhibit, including how to convey information about an object to the public in a concise but interesting way.
“I feel like we are familiar with museums as institutions, but not so much as a collection of people,” Schwab said. “Being able to work with the curatorial team, and getting to know all the people who are involved in designing this exhibition, has been a great experience, because I’ve started to see that it’s not just this big building where you go to see art—there’s an entire team of people involved in this process.”
The culminating exhibit, Scent: Connection, Confrontation, Memory, is on display now through May 10 and brings together painting, printmaking, sculpture, video, and interactive displays to bring visitors into the sensory experience of scent as an idea and an aesthetic. From March 16-23, Ainu artist Kanako Uzawa will be on campus to meet with students and debut an art installation with a special talk on March 22 at 3 p.m. in the museum’s back gallery. This installation will remain until the exhibition’s close. The exhibition features 50-plus objects from the museum’s collection and loans from the University of Memphis and Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University—along with the thoughtful research and talented design of many Vanderbilt students.