German scents exhibition combines 1,000 years of fragrances with art and history

The show “The Secret Power of Scents”, which opened to the public on Wednesday at the Kunstpalast museum in the city of Duesseldorf, combines fragrances with art, taking visitors on a journey of more than 1,000 years of cultural history.

“This exhibition is an experiment – and an invitation for our audience to discover the history of scents with their noses,” says Felix Kraemer, the museum’s director general.

The exhibition follows a chronological order, from religious artefacts of the Middle Ages through to contemporary art of the 21st century. The galleries are equipped with atomisers and diffusers to create a connection between the art and the smell of a specific time period or cultural context.

The scent of myrrh wafts through a darkened gallery of Christian wood carvings depicting various scenes from the Bible. Christianity, Judaism and Islam all used myrrh as a symbol for prayer and purification, the show explains.