Smithsonian.com reports on a new exhibit that the Smithsonian commisioned for their Cooper Hewitt, National Design Museum for the fifth installment of its Design Triennial. Something can look beautiful or sound beautiful, but can it smell beautiful? According to Sissel Tolaas—artist, chemist and smell expert—this is a silly question.
The aesthetics of smell has fascinated Sissel for years. She has done location-focused works in the past, capturing the scents of places such as Istanbul and Greenland, and with Manhattan’s most famous park in the Cooper Hewitt’s backyard, it made sense to develop a work based on that area.
To do this, she visited the park not in summer or spring, when the smell of flowers or plant life would be strongest, but in October, aiming to capture the more complex smells of flora as it begins to die. She spent about a week walking through Central Park gathering and sampling all different smells from the 1.3-square-mile expanse.
“Beauty—Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial,” is on view through Aug. 21, 2016 at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, at 2 East 91st Street in New York City.
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