Longwood Gardens (Kennett Square, PA) will present its first major exhibition Making Scents: The Art and Passion of Fragrance, April 10—November 21, 2010. The exhibition will feature a 18-foot tall sculptural trellis in the shape of a perfume bottle interlaced with changing, fragrant plantings that vary with each season to offer guests a unique sensory experience; more than 260 different genera of aromatic plants and flowers have been added specifically for the exhibition. The event will also explore how scent molecules send signals to the brain that trigger moods, emotions and memories, and describe the biological processes of smell.
Further, the exhibition will showcase the technical processes behind perfume creation, from traditional harvest and extraction methods to chemical combinations of synthetic fragrances. It will also offer visitors an opportunity to experience and describe the scents of mystery perfumes and determine their classification, identify their favorite scents, explore possible combinations of notes, and finally create a scented card featuring their own personal fragrance. The exhibition will profile “scent seekers” Roman Kaiser and Texas “rose rustler” Mike Shoup and feature lectures by Avery N. Gilbert, a smell scientist, entrepreneur, and author of What the Nose Knows: The Science of Scent in Everyday Life; Richard Stamelman, academic consultant for Making Scents: The Art and Passion of Fragrance, and visiting professor, Dartmouth College on “Fragrant Gardens, Fragrant Scents: The Culture of Perfume”; and Roman Kaiser on “Scents around the World—An Olfactory and Visual Experience”
