The Museum and the Senses | Study Day
In January 2025 the Barber invited a range of speakers for a study day exploring the museum and the senses. Industry experts from various UK arts institutions shared their experiences working with sound, smell, touch and taste to enhance audience connections to visual art.
These five presentations have been recorded and are available below to support research and museum sector learning.
Scented Visions: Engaging with art through scent
Our exhibition Scent and the Art of the Pre-Raphaelites was the inspiration for this study day. In this panel discussion the creators of the show explored how and why scent was incorporated into the space.
Speakers:
Dr Christina Bradstreet, guest curator of the exhibition and author of Scented Visions: Smell in Art, 1850-1914
Gregorio Sola, Senior Perfumer and Creative Director at Puig, the Spanish fashion and fragrance house
Antje Kiewell, Founder of Artphilia and AirParfum lead UK
Sensing Naples: A sensory approach to a collection display at Compton Verney
Compton Verney are another organisation that have incorporated scent into their curation.
In the below talk Amy Orrock, Curator, and Annelise Hone, Exhibitions and Collections Manager, explain how this multi-sensory approach made their collection of paintings from Naples more accessible and family-friendly.
Empowering Emotion: Multi-sensory approaches to the visitor experience at the Sainsbury Centre
The Sainsbury Centre, at University of East Anglia in Norwich, have embraced the senses as part of their innovative Living Art initiative.
Jago Cooper, Director, talks about how the centre encourages audiences to find unusual ways to forge relationships with artworks.
The Perfumed Palace: Marie Antoinette Style
The Victoria and Albert Museum's upcoming exhibition Marie Antoinette Style will consider the fragrant, as well as fashionable, world the Queen inhabited.
Senior Curator Dr Sarah Grant outlines the curatorial process and explains why scent was an important element in the puzzle of this iconic figure's life.
Unmuting the Image: Art history, sound studies and the multi-sensory museum
The Barber's 2024 display Peace and Noise: Sounds of the Landscape introduced visitors to the elements of implied sound evident in historical landscapes from the Barber’s prints and drawings collection, encouraging the visitor to explore exciting, and previously unconsidered, multisensory avenues of interpretation.
Guest Curator, Rebecca Owen-Keats, describes the research that led to the display and why sound is an important but often overlooked lens through which to engage with art.