(from The Interior Architecture Reader, edited by Gregory Marinic, 2018 Routledge)

Chapter 25

Touch, Taste, Smell: Fostering Museum Visitor Engagement with Mulitsensory spaces

Kirsten Brown

Museums are, by design, institutions that convey the importance of culture and heritage by preserving and presenting collections that represent the changes and advancements in the arts, sciences, histories, and societies of the world. Modern museums have undergone several variations over the last two centuries. Wunderkammern (cabinets of curiosities) were collections of antiquities, specimens, and works of art assembled by society’s elite in a grand display of power and wealth, and presented for the purpose of study and enrichment. Eventually, access to such collections expanded and many would become the foundations of what are now the most notable museum collections (Musée du Louvre, Galleria degli Uffizi, and the British Museum, for example). In their earliest iterations, museums encouraged a multidimensional encounter with objects. Visitors were treated as guests, with the freedom to examine objects with their own eyes, hands, ears, and noses, and sometimes even to take a taste.$^1$ It was taken for granted that

deep understanding of an object – its history, its purpose, its context – required a multisensory investigation engaging space.

As audiences continued to grow, it became necessary for museums to adapt handling policies in consideration of the long-term preservation of their collections, while still fulfilling the need for cultural education and enrichment. These more restrictive policies were facilitated in part by the advent of electric lighting, which allowed visitors to observe objects clearly from a distance. Later, an aesthetic shift in the modern era placed total importance on sight-based discourse, further eliminating the non-visual senses from the museum experience. These circumstances combined to result in almost universal sensorial neglect in exhibit design. Although this one-dimensional approach continues today, many institutions are beginning to “challenge the restrictive politics of the modern museum.” Innovative methods of incorporating sensorial stimulation into interior spaces used by museums to exhibit collections objects have a calculated, direct impact on how visiting audiences interpret and relate to the subject matter. Nina Simon explains, “design decisions can help them successfully achieve content and experience goals … developing participatory experiences in which visitors create, share, and connect with each other around content.” Through their use of thoughtful exhibit design, museums also have a unique opportunity to guide the audience’s understanding and acceptance of cultural differences, while providing a source of education and entertainment. According to Zisch, Gage, and Spiers, “As we experience a museum our brain constructs its own internal museum of the mind… This process is fundamentally guided by the architecture of the space and its influence on our perceptions and expectations.” The following examples serve to illustrate the ways in which museum spaces can facilitate a more meaningful museum experience by incorporating elements that work to engage audiences beyond the visual realm utilizing touch, taste, and smell.

Don’t touch the art

Anyone who has visited a museum is familiar with the ubiquitous – and sometimes aggressive – no-touch policy. Buzzing alarms, physical barriers, and watchful guards are all employed to maintain a safe distance between the object and the visitor. Some institutions, however, are beginning to lighten, or in some cases even eliminate, the structures and policies that restrict direct access to collections objects with the hope that closer investigation will facilitate a more complete understanding of the objects and a deeper connection to the stories behind them. Efforts which reject the notion that museum exhibits should be seen, but not touched, support scientific evidence that the experience of an object is more complete with the incorporation of touch, that the human brain is wired for multifaceted sensation of physical objects. According to Lacey and Sathian,

Many brain regions previously considered to be specialized for various aspects of visual input are now known to be activated during analogous tactile or haptic (passive or active touch, respectively) tasks … when feeling an object, one naturally imagines what it looks like.$^5$

Touching an object does not exclusively contribute to the touch sensation; it adds a layer to visual sensation as well. The visual presence of an object illustrates the subject matter. The feel of the object’s surface (tool marks, damage, blemishes, areas worn from repeated use) brings to life the narrative of its life, context, and cultural value.

Museums have adopted a variety of methods for facilitating tactile encounters with collections in how they construct exhibit spaces and what they choose to include within the space. At the Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence, visitors are invited to use gloved hands to touch a number of Renaissance and mannerist sculptures as they walk through the airy galleries and corridors. They can feel the textures and intricate details much like the artists themselves would have. Many museums, from university special collections to the Musée du Louvre, allow scholars and scientists to investigate objects (under close supervision) in sparse, organized study

spaces that more closely resemble libraries or laboratories than exhibit galleries. Through their design, these spaces actuate careful, inquisitive interactions with museum collections for the purpose of academic study. Other museums put authentic objects to practical use, supplementing their authentic collections with historically accurate replicas that simulate physical interactions with objects as they occurred in the past. At various locations around Old Sturbridge Village, a living history museum in Sturbridge, Massachusetts, visitors enter houses, shops, and other places of business to observe what life was like in late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth-century America. Freestanding structures, built with local materials and methods faithful to those of the period, are filled with authentic artifacts “made or used by rural New Englanders between 1790 and 1840.” “Villagers” demonstrate everyday tasks and interact with the public as they go about their work, offering objects for them to touch and try (Figure 25.1). These built environments immerse the audience in the period, allowing them to experience a former way of life, to participate in it, rather than simply observing it via a series of independent objects on display in a formal exhibit.

While each of these examples illustrates how museums are beginning to incorporate tacticity into their interior environments, facilitating touch in museums offers another role. It is also a catalyst for the inclusion of those who are physically unable to visually engage with objects and spaces. Rebecca McGinnis explains, “The perspective of visitors who are blind or partially sighted, a group often excluded or marginalized by art museums, is significant in drawing attention to the richness of experience beyond the visual museum that a museum can offer.” In response to the need for innovative ways to engage visitors who do not rely on sight for their experience and interpretation, some museums are developing exhibit spaces specifically designed for the benefit of the vision impaired. Touching the Prado, a 2015 art exhibit at the Museo del Prado in Madrid, Spain, employed the latest three-dimensional printing technology in collaboration with experts in visual impairment to render famous works of art accessible to those who could not see them. Works representing six genres from the

museum’s permanent collection of paintings were exhibited with the objective of “bringing a heightened degree of artistic-aesthetic creative enjoyment” for blind and limited-sighted guests. Coupled with braille didactics and supplemental audio guides, the exhibit facilitated a multifaceted, independent engagement and interpretation of works of visual art for those who typically experience art through third-party explanations.

Figure 25.1 Left. A cobbler in his shop at Old Sturbridge Village demonstrates the process for making shoes at the turn of the nineteenth-century. Right. Visitors are invited to give hand-made shoes a try.

Image credit: Kirsten Brown

Although the touchable masterpieces were clearly the highlight of the exhibit, equal attention was given to the exhibit space itself. At first glance, the gallery appears to evoke the typical “white cube,” but upon closer investigation, the intent behind its simple design is revealed. The white walls are sparse, as decorative imagery or text are unnecessary to fulfill the purpose of the exhibit. The works are displayed on slightly angled platforms that place them at a natural height and distance from the audience – at arm’s reach rather than safely hung out of reach. Didactic panels in braille and text accompany each work to provide a description and historical information. Pedestals are the only fixtures in the room, placed at regular intervals to encourage a clear, unobstructed, natural flow through the exhibit. Water bowls are also placed throughout the gallery to provide refreshment for accompanying service dogs. Every detail of the exhibit space was designed with the target audience in mind.

A peripheral outcome of the exhibit is the added value of touch in the experience of sighted visitors. In his essay The Secret of Aesthetics Lies in the Conjugation of the Senses, anthropologist David Howes describes the aesthetic benefit experienced by sighted visitors who are able to complement visual observation with tactile interaction: “Sighted visitors found their experience of a painting to be enriched when they were able to simultaneously view and explore a painting manually with the aid of a tactile model.” Including the option to make physical contact with museum objects fosters a meaningful connection between the visitor and the subject matter and, by extension, a connection between the visitor and the museum.

All in good taste

The sense of taste, in its most simple definition, is the stimulation of taste buds resulting in the perception or experience of flavor. The human experience of taste, however, is much more complex, having layers of social, cultural, and even political meaning. Ingredients and recipes serve as hallmarks of culture and identity, evoking memories of people, places, and experiences. Museums have begun to explore the potential for meaning-

making by developing carefully curated taste experiences within or in addition to their exhibit spaces. Walking through galleries and exhibit halls, the impact of food on society makes a consistent mark. Antiquities used for making and storing food tell stories about traditions and methods used throughout history, and detailed paintings illustrate the beauty of a sumptuous meal, but there is often a disconnect between what the visitor sees and the actual cultural and sensorial significance of food. Irina D. Mihalache notes,

While taste and its signifier, food, have been present in museums for quite some time as subjects of different works of art, artful dishes in restaurants and cafes, food’s own materiality as an object with educational potential has rarely been explored.$^{10}$

Making and sharing a meal is a universal form of communication and is a means of connection between people and their environment. By providing opportunities to incorporate taste into their visit, “the overall museum experience becomes more participatory, multisensorial, and more engaging for the visitor”; museums are able to create an emotional response and connection in addition to the cultural-educational museum experience.$^{11}$

The museum cafe has been a common element of museum design for decades. It has begun to undergo reinterpretation as an integral contributor to meaningful engagement with a museum’s subject matter. The dishes served to the public, and the design of kitchen and dining spaces themselves, have the potential to provide visitors with a tangible understanding of the culture represented by the chosen cuisine. The spatial design and the meals served at Mitsitam Native Foods Cafe ($\textit{mitsitam}$, meaning, “Let’s eat!” in the native language of the Delaware and Piscataway peoples) at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC, emphasizes the need for careful consideration of the role of food in the visitor experience as a complement to what they see in the exhibit halls. The cafeteria is divided into five food stations with menu offerings that include:

… maple brined turkey with cranberry relish (Northern Woodlands), chicken tamale in a corn husk with peanut sauce (South America), cedar planked fire-roasted juniper salmon platter (Northwest Coast), yellow corn or soft flour tortilla tacos with carne (Meso America) and the crowd-pleasing Indian taco – buffalo chili on fry bread topped with onions, lettuce, tomato and cheese (Great Plains), which depict regional lifeways related to cooking techniques, ingredients, and flavors found in both traditional and contemporary Native dishes.12

Each station offers an opportunity to explore not only the flavors of Native American cuisine, but also traditional methods of production, like the custom-built fire pit used for food preparation and cooking demonstrations.

Restaurants are an extension of the museological space with the ability to “educate and encourage visitors to think reflectively about what they eat and how their taste constructs stereotypes and ideas about other communities and cultures.” The design of the interior space where this interaction takes place reinforces these ideas.13 Every interior architectural detail of the dining area at NMAI was built with Native American cultures as an inspiration. The architects and designers maintained an ongoing conversation with Native American communities from across the Western hemisphere to faithfully represent the architectural traditions, craftsmanship, and cultural sensibilities of Native American peoples. The curvilinear forms and vertical cedar paneling of the restaurant interior reflect similar conditions on the exterior, evoking wind-sculpted rock formations and dense forests found in the natural landscapes of the Americas. As Frances Hayden describes in We the People, “The landscape flows into the building, and the environment is who we are. We are the trees, we are the rocks, we are the water. And that had to be part of the museum”14 (Figure 25.2).

Although thoughtful museum dining spaces are the most common method for incorporating taste into the museum, some take the concept much further, building exhibits or even entire museums around taste experiences and their related history and culture. The Southern Food and

Beverage Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana, “examines and celebrates all the cultures that have come together through the centuries to create the South’s unique culinary heritage.” While the museum displays exhibits about the diverse culinary history of the South, it also serves as a community center providing lectures, demonstrations, and tastings that create a living history and meet the needs of the local community. In his essay “To Exhibit, To Place, To Deposit,” Hans Hollein explains how “the role of the museum is generally in the process of being restructured as far as both tasks and content are concerned, as are its relations with the public.” Accordingly, the Southern Food and Beverage Museum is embracing the changing role of museums, which has evolved to focus on its responsibility to the local community not only as a cultural center, but also as a community center. Its galleries are accompanied by working kitchens where members of the community can partake in programming that brings the subject matter to life. Much as the kitchen is the social center of the home, the kitchen is also the social center of the Southern Food and Beverage Museum; it is used to take advantage of the fact that food – its production, its preparation, and the ritual of sharing a meal – is both formed by and contributes to community identity and the role the museum plays in that identity. Irina Mihalache states, “taste … can be educated by the self and by the larger social, political, and cultural contexts.” By using the museum space to facilitate direct interaction between visitors and Southern cuisine, it provides the opportunity for the community to build stronger ties with its own history and culture.

The nose knows The human sense of smell is largely overlooked as a tool for interpretation and is typically only considered in the context of pleasure: perfume, candles, flowers, and food. When considered in a deeper context, smells facilitate the recollection of memories, emotional response, and a multidimensional

impression of a place, object, or experience. Museums have only recently begun to exploit the value of smell in their exhibits, “moving toward an appreciation that people have more than one sense – vision – and that the other senses can be productively employed to enhance patrons’ experience.” For a truly meaningful sensorial engagement, smell interaction must be utilized as more than a novel detail.

Smell-inclusive exhibits most often use smell as a complement to an established narrative to “create a more realistic and engaging sense impression” of the subject matter, taking an existing topic and adding a compelling new layer to the exhibit. Located in an otherwise unremarkable hallway near the gift shop of the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum in New York, the 2016 Triennial exhibit Smell, The Beauty of Decay: Smellscape Central Park Autumn 2015, by Sissel Tolaas, invites visitors to experience Central Park, which lies adjacent to the museum, using solely their sense of smell. Accompanied only by a small map of the park and a tiny room filled with the artist’s tools for scent experimentation, the primary focus of the exhibit lies in what seem to be bare walls. Tolaas infused the wall paint with a scent profile constructed from samples of “smell molecules” taken from Central Park to “arouse memories, recreate place, capture seasonality, and stir emotional and intellectual responses.” A gentle application of friction to the painted surface releases the scent, which is then aerated (Figure 25.3). “You see that it is really a scientific process with molecules in a very sterile context,” explains Andrea Lipps, assistant curator at Cooper Hewitt, “The exhibition itself is trying to challenge visitors to approach design and experiences with objects with much more sensitivity.” The simple layout of the exhibit space allows its objective of communicating the smells of Central Park to take center stage, while its placement in relation to other museum spaces and the direction of foot traffic ensure that it does not go unnoticed.

Scent is a notoriously difficult medium to effectively preserve and transmit to the public, and so it presents unique challenges for use in museum contexts. On a psychological level, “people form all types of personal associations and judgments about smells from … their personal experience.” Each person has a unique interpretation of and reaction to different smells, which can make it difficult to direct the experience of smell

into a desired narrative. Additionally, Andreas Keller explains, “smells are more difficult to stably position in space than visual objects.” They must be presented in a way that preserves the authentic fragrance, effectively transmits it to the visitor, and does not interfere with other nearby smells. Smell can, however, serve as independent works of art worthy of primary focus in museum exhibits.

Museums are only just beginning to explore the value of smell for its own unique aesthetic value. The Art of Scent, a 2013 exhibit at the Museum of Art and Design in New York, highlighted the experimental and innovative nature of fragrance design with an equally experimental and innovative exhibit gallery that sought to “recognize and celebrate scent as a true artistic medium rather than just a consumer product.” The nearly empty gallery space, designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, featured a presentation of twelve commercial fragrances ranging from universal classics like Chanel No. 5 (1921) to innovations in scientific fragrance development, like Daniela Andrier’s Untitled (2010). In response to the “enormous industry based around designing and marketing commercial fragrances [whose] extraneous characteristics can also shape our perception of the scent, and sometimes even shape the scent itself,” the unadorned space completely removes the fragrances from their commercial context.

As the visitor approached each fragrance, leaning into the “dimple,” it released a small burst of scent from a hidden machine. Each scent quickly dissipates to nothing, having been “specially modified to resist sticking on skin or clothes,” allowing each fragrance to be experienced without cross-contamination. All didactic information was displayed in the form of illuminated text, which periodically appeared and disappeared to avoid detracting attention away from the primary objective of purely olfactory sensation.

Today’s museum environments are embracing the evolving role of museums as participatory community centers while also maintaining more traditional objectives of preserving collections and providing a forum for education and entertainment, exercising the understanding that “exhibitions should enrich and enlarge the life of the person, child or adult, who sees

them. Their value lies not within the museum walls, but in how much the visitor takes with him when he leaves.” Exhibit spaces that incorporate opportunities for visitors to engage with objects and concepts using touch, taste, and smell facilitate interactions that “induce a sense of being part of the thing in question,” instead of merely observing it from a distance. Touch allows for a deeper understanding of materials and helps the visitor to develop a sense of ownership of their experience of museum objects. Taste “bridges the gap between personal experiences – each of us tastes food differently and intimately at a biological level – and collective meanings and values.” Smell takes advantage of unusual psychological properties linked to personal experiences to invoke an emotional reaction or connection to the subject matter. Museums, curators, and designers must consider spatial construction and their responsibility to create exhibit spaces where visitors can not only observe but also participate in meaning-making.

Notes

1. David Howes, “The Secret of Aesthetics Lies in the Conjugation of the Senses”, in The Multisensory Museum: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Touch, Sound, Smell, Memory, and Space, ed. Nina Levent, Alvaro Pascual-Leone, and Lacey Simon (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), p. 285.

2. Amy Ione, “Art and the Senses ed. by Francesca Bacci and David Melcher (Review)”, Leonardo 47, no. 5 (2014): 515–516.

3. Nina Simon, The Participatory Museum (Santa Cruz: Museum 2.0, 2010), www.participatorymuseum.org/chapter1/

4. Fiona Zisch, Stephen Gage, and Hugo Spiers, “Navigating the Museum”, in The Multisensory Museum: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Touch, Sound, Smell, Memory, and Space, ed. Nina Levent, Alvaro Pascual-Leone, and Lacey Simon (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), p. 215.

5. (MSM p. 3.4) Simon Lacey and K. Sathian, “Please Do Touch the Exhibits!”, in The Multisensory Museum: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Touch, Sound, Smell, Memory, and Space, ed. Nina Levent, Alvaro Pascual-Leone, and Lacey Simon (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), p. 3, 4.

6 “Collections”, Old Sturbridge Village, 2015, www.osv.org/ 7 Rebecca McGinnis, “Islands of Stimulation”, p. 319. 2014. 8 Renee Phillips, Museum Art Program for Visually Impaired Visitors, 4 March 2015, www.healing-power-of-art.org/for-visually-impaired-visiters/ 9 David Howes, “The Secret of Aesthetics Lies in the Conjugation of the Senses”, p. 297. 10 Irina D. Mihalache, “Taste-Full Museums”, in The Multisensory Museum: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Touch, Sound, Smell, Memory, and Space, ed. Nina Levent, Alvaro Pascual-Leone, and Lacey Simon (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), p. 197. 11 Robert Barthes, “Towards a Psychosociology of Contemporary Food Consumption”, in Food and Culture: A Reader, 3rd ed., ed. Carole Counihan and Penny Van Esterik (New York: Routledge, 1997), pp. 28–35. 12 “Architecture and Landscape”, 2015, http://nmai.si.edu/visit/washington/architecture-landscape/ 13 “Mitsitam Cafe”, 2015, http://nmai.si.edu/visit/washington/mitsitam-cafe/ 14 Francis Hayden, “By the People”, Smithsonian, September 2004, pp. 50–57. 15 “Southern Food and Beverage Museum”, 2015, http://natfab.org/southern-food-and-beverage/ 16 Hans Hollein, “To Exhibit, to Place, to Deposit: Thoughts on the Museum of Modern Art, Frankfurt” in New Museology, ed. Andreas Papadakis (London: St. Martin’s Press, 1991): 41. 17 Mihalache, “Taste-Full Museums”, p. 202. 18 Richard J. Stevenson, “The Forgotten Sense”, in The Multisensory Museum: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Touch, Sound, Smell, Memory, and Space, ed. Nina Levent, Alvaro Pascual-Leone, and Lacey Simon (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), p. 162. 19 Ibid., p. 152. 20 Sissel Tolaas, “Smell, the Beauty of Decay: Smellscape Central Park Autumn”, 2015. For Beauty – Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Museum of Design, 2016, https://collection.cooperhewitt.org/objects/69155275/ 21 Alex Palmer, “Can Smell Be a Work of Art?”, 23 February 2016, www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/can-you-smell-work-art-180958189?no-ist 22 Jim Drobnick, “The Museum as Smellscape”, in The Multisensory Museum: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Touch, Sound, Smell, Memory, and Space, ed. Nina Levent, Alvaro Pascual-Leone, and Lacey Simon (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), p. 188. 23 Andreas Keller, “The Scented Museum”, in The Multisensory Museum: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Touch, Sound, Smell, Memory, and Space, ed. Nina Levent, Alvaro Pascual-Leone, and Lacey Simon (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), p. 167.

24 Jimmy Stamp, “The First Major Museum Show to Focus on Scent”, Smithsonian Magazine, 16 January 2013, www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-first-major-museum-show-to-focus-on-smell-1787124/?no-ist

25 Ibid.

26 Ibid.

27 Katharine Beneker, “Exhibits – Firing Platforms for the Imagination”, Curator: The Museum Journal 1 (1958): 76–81.

28 Stevenson, “The Forgotten Sense”, p. 161.

29 Mihalache, “Taste-Full Museums”, p. 198.