The Olfactive Gallery: Exploring the Objecthood of Smell

A conversation with Jessica Murphy (independent researcher) and Andreas Keller (Olfactory Art Keller) Join us for a conversation between two pioneering scholars who are changing the way we experience art through our most evocative sense, smell. Andreas Keller and Jessica Murphy will share their experiments in olfactory design: how smells can invite new interpretations, provide sensorial context, and enhance aesthetic appreciation for the museumgoer or gallery visitor. Keller will focus on how he works with artists to include scents in their creations; the resulting work, he argues, prompts a slower, embodied way of interacting with art. Murphy will discuss her method of crafting museum tours that combine visual and olfactory elements, always starting with a critical question: for example, how might an eighteenth-century potpourri vessel have smelled? Theodora Brown (MA ’26) will moderate the conversation. Jessica Murphy is a museum professional and fragrance historian whose work connects art, scent, and popular culture. She holds a PhD in art history from the University of Delaware and has worked in research positions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. As manager of visitor engagement at the Brooklyn Museum, she created a series of scented gallery tours of special exhibitions and permanent collections from 2019 to 2025. She has lectured about fragrance through cultural venues including the Corning Museum of Glass, the Timken Museum of Art