Scent Interpretations of Getty Exhibits
by the Institute for Art and Olfaction
in collaboration with The Getty Center
April, 2026
The Institute for Art and Olfaction teamed up with The Getty Center to create four aromatic interpretations of artworks or exhibitions at the museum, as part of their annual College Night celebration.
College Night is an annual after-hours celebration exclusively for college students—featuring art, food, music, behind-the-scenes experiences, artmaking, and more.
Scent Interpretations
The Institute for Art and Olfaction team explored an exhibition on view at the Getty through an olfactory lens, resulting in five aromatic compositions, four of which can be experienced during College Night.
Impressionism Galleries
Scent by Daniel Krasofski, for the Institute for Art and Olfaction
This scent interprets Impressionism by seeking to capture the intangible, and by translating perception into emotion. Unfolding through fleeting moments that shift and evolve, this scent seeks to reveal depth through its own impermanence. A fragrance, like an Impressionist painting, develops in layers, transforming with light, air, and memory. Like Impressionism, it celebrates transition by inviting the observer to linger within what is briefly beautiful. This scent expresses this experience, before it fades into memory. Olfactory notes include citrus, lavender, geranium, clary sage, oakmoss, sandalwood, hay absolute, ocean mist, and earth.
+ Explore Impressionist works at the Getty
Beginnings: The Story of Creation in the Middle Ages
Scent by Lucas Cuevas, for the Institute for Art and Olfaction
This scent interprets the Creation narrative as a convergence of soil, life, and human becoming. Inspired by medieval manuscripts and contemporary works in the Getty Museum’s ‘Beginnings: The Story of Creation in the Middle Ages’ exhibit, the composition unfolds in three accords. A wet soil accord evokes the first formed earth, an animalic accord captures the musk of ancestor creatures, and, finally, a fig accord encapsulates the flourishing of cultivation, knowledge, and human agency. Together, the notes seek to mirror the exhibition’s vision of humanity as a bridge between the natural and spiritual realms.
+ Explore Beginnings: The Story of Creation in the Middle Ages
Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955–1985
Scent by Julianne Lee, for the Institute for Art and Olfaction
Black-owned Grocery Store, Sunday, Mileston, Mississippi, 1968 presents a moment from the everyday, captured by Doris A. Derby. A woman and four girls in their Sunday best enjoy ice cream on the porch of a Black-owned grocery store. The Mississippi air is thick and lush, and there is a sense of respite, both from the summer heat and the world beyond: Joy, ease, even tiredness, a touch of boredom. You can smell the melting vanilla ice cream, the gauze of hairspray, and soda pop spilled from previous patrons, all in the shade of a sun-warmed wooden roof.
+ View Black-owned Grocery Store, Sunday, Mileston, Mississippi, 1968
Baroque Paintings and Sculptures
Scent by Minetta Rogers, for the Institute for Art and Olfaction
Lot and His Daughters by Orazio Gentileschi depicts the biblical story of Lot’s family fleeing the destruction of Sodom by God. Other painters of the era chose to depict this as a taboo encounter or an apocalyptic landscape. Gentileschi, in contrast, focuses on the human uncertainty of a family after their homeland has been destroyed and their matriarch lost while fleeing the city. This scent interpretation foregrounds a millefleur of Sodom’s apple, carnation, and rose. Underneath the floral bouquet lies the scent of uneasy bodies filled with wine and honey resting in a dusty cave. Far away, a city burns.
+ View Lot and His Daughters
Extra Credit: How to Be a Guerrilla Girl
Scent by Saskia Wilson-Brown, for the Institute for Art and Olfaction
Fueled by resistance and infused by a hefty dose of righteous frustration, this scent interprets the feminist activist perspective of the art collective Guerilla Girls, and their campaign for gender equity in the art world. Notes include gorilla sweat, female skin, oil paint, and the cavernous, brightly-lit galleries of New York City.
+ Explore How to Be a Guerilla Girl
PHOTOS FROM COLLEGE NIGHT
