Multisensory Museum

Definition

The multisensory museum is the exhibit-space paradigm that designs the non-visual senses — touch, taste, smell (with sound) — as interpretive media rather than amenities, on the historical thesis that the museum began multisensory and was made ocularcentric. Kirsten Brown's chapter (the wiki's founding source) gives the concept its three-part arc:

1. Origins. Wunderkammern and the early public collections "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" — and "it was taken for granted that deep understanding of an object – its history, its purpose, its context – required a multisensory investigation engaging space."
2. Foreclosure. Preservation policy for growing audiences, "the advent of electric lighting, which allowed visitors to observe objects clearly from a distance," and "an aesthetic shift in the modern era [that] placed total importance on sight-based discourse" combined into "almost universal sensorial neglect in exhibit design" — the museum's white cube condition, its anosmia (Drobnick) and touch-ban.
3. Re-opening. Contemporary institutions "challenge the restrictive politics of the modern museum" by designing the senses back in — Brown's three registers: touch (gloved contact at the Uffizi; study rooms resembling "libraries or laboratories"; Old Sturbridge Village's living-history handling; Touching the Prado's 3D-printed tactile paintings for blind visitors), taste (the Mitsitam Cafe's regional foodways; the Southern Food and Beverage Museum's community kitchens), and smell (Tolaas's scent-infused walls; The Art of Scent's stripped fragrance gallery).

The concept's mechanism-claim is the chapter's thesis: "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." Each sense does distinct interpretive work — touch yields "a deeper understanding of materials" and "a sense of ownership"; taste "bridges the gap between personal experiences… and collective meanings and values"; smell "invokes an emotional reaction or connection" through memory — with the design horizon that visitors "not only observe but also participate in meaning-making."

The concept is the museum-scale instance of the interior discipline's sensorial register (see sensorial-interior-landscape): the exhibit interior designed as a field of bodily encounter rather than a container for seen objects.

Key Thinkers

• Kirsten Brown — the concept's founding source in the wiki: the historical arc (multisensory origin → sensorial neglect → designed re-opening) and the three sense-registers with their built cases.
• Jim Drobnick — the olfactory theory the museum cases instantiate: the conventional museum's anosmic condition, heterosmia, and aromatopia ("The Museum as Smellscape," 2014, cited in Brown's notes).
• (Discussed in the source, not yet paged — see log: Nina Simon, The Participatory Museum (2010), the participatory frame; David Howes, "The Secret of Aesthetics Lies in the Conjugation of the Senses" (2014), the multisensory-aesthetics warrant and the Wunderkammer history; Irina D. Mihalache, "Taste-Full Museums" (2014); Andreas Keller, "The Scented Museum" (2014); Richard J. Stevenson, "The Forgotten Sense" (2014); Sissel Tolaas, scent artist; Hans Hollein, "To Exhibit, to Place, to Deposit" (1991), the museum-restructuring thesis.)

Related Concepts

• White Cube — the sensorial-foreclosure paradigm the multisensory museum works against; and, in the Prado's case, the template it repurposes from within (the sparse gallery redesigned for blindness and touch).
• Exhibitionary Complex — the institutional apparatus being reconfigured: from directed looking and the no-touch regime ("buzzing alarms, physical barriers, and watchful guards") to participatory, bodily engagement.
• Sensorial Interior Landscape — the Reader's sibling register: the same multisensory programme (ambient conditioning, performative ornament, smell among the modulated media) at building/grotto scale rather than exhibit scale.
• Olfaction — the least exploited of the three senses: smellscape exhibits, the scented museum, and the curation problem ("smells are more difficult to stably position in space than visual objects").
• Participatory Museum — Simon's frame the sensorial programme serves: "participatory experiences in which visitors create, share, and connect with each other around content."
• Memory — the cognitive engine: smell and taste "facilitate the recollection of memories, emotional response, and a multidimensional impression of a place, object, or experience"; the visitor's "internal museum of the mind" (Zisch, Gage & Spiers).
• Narrative Space — the interpretive stake: touch reads the object's surface as biography ("tool marks, damage, blemishes… bring[] to life the narrative of its life, context, and cultural value").

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Touch, Taste, Smell (Brown 2018) — the concept's founding source: the historical arc, the three sense-registers (touch/taste/smell) with their built cases (Uffizi, Old Sturbridge Village, Touching the Prado, Mitsitam Cafe, Southern F&B Museum, Tolaas's Smellscape, The Art of Scent), the calculated-impact thesis, and the closing designer's responsibility.
• source-notes/downey-2018-to-dwell-means-to-leave-traces

Open Questions

• Is the multisensory museum a paradigm (a general redesign of the exhibit interior) or a programme (add-on sensory stations within an unchanged visual museum)? Brown's cases are mostly supplements — tactile models, cafes, scent rooms — alongside unchanged visual galleries; has any museum yet been designed multisensory from the start?
• Does the engineered scent (Tolaas's wall paint, the non-sticking modified fragrances) fulfil or refute Drobnick's aromatopia critique — is high-art scent design the sense's emancipation or the marketing quick fix laundered through minimalism?
• Can the multisensory museum be directed? Smell's personal-association problem ("people form all types of personal associations and judgments about smells from… their personal experience") suggests designed scent cannot script its interpretation — is this the participatory ideal or a design failure?
• What is the multisensory museum's politics of access? Touching the Prado designs for blind visitors — but the touchable museum also benefits sighted visitors (Howes). Is accessibility the programme's origin, its alibi, or its completion?