Louvre Abu Dhabi introduces a tour that lets you smell the artworks - As-salamu alaykum
As-salamu alaykum - walking through Louvre Abu Dhabi, I came across a 17th-century still life showing a kitchen table with meat, birds, sliced lemons and bread crusts. It’s called Still Life in a Pantry by Jeremie Plume, and one striking thing about it is how easily you can imagine the different smells each item would give off. Now the museum is making that imagination real.
In partnership with Swiss fragrance house Givaudan, Louvre Abu Dhabi is launching Art in Scents, a guided tour that pairs nine works from the museum’s permanent collection with custom fragrances meant to bring out their mood, setting and story. The tour launches at the end of October.
Visitors get a small Art in Scents booklet whose microencapsulated pages release a scent for each painting or sculpture. “This lets you step into the artwork and experience it in a new sensory way,” says Noura Almansoori, a museum educator.
Two of Givaudan’s master perfumers, Dalia Izem and Gael Montero, helped translate the visual and historical details of each piece into scent. They drew on material, atmosphere and history to make each encounter personal. Montero notes that studying historical ingredients and how they were used is an important part of perfumery; Izem says the museum gave them artistic freedom to extend each artwork’s dimension into smell.
They also created a signature scent, A Universal Breeze, inspired by the museum’s dome, the desert’s mineral tones and the salt air of the Gulf. It mixes marine, musk, incense and amber notes and will be diffused in the entrance halls as a welcome fragrance.
The tour ranges from ancient Egypt to modern Japan. For a relief titled Image of a Queen or a Goddess, the perfumers recreated Kyphi-style incense with myrrh, frankincense and honey to evoke ritual devotion. Another work uses frankincense and resin to suggest sacred smoke bridging earth and the divine. The still life I mentioned brings a domestic scene to life with bread, broth and roasted meat notes - a memory of home.
Not every scent is meant to be conventionally pleasant; the aim is to capture a moment in time. As Montero explains, some smells are enjoyable in context but you wouldn’t necessarily want to wear them as a perfume.
Other pieces get scents that match their origin and mood: Ottoman Iznik tiles inspire a powdery mix of narcissus, iris and musk; a Burne-Jones painting evokes rose and bramble with metallic hints; Renoir’s Cup of Chocolate is reimagined with rose, violet and cocoa; a late-night scene is rendered in tobacco, leather and cedar. Contemporary Saudi artist Maha Malluh’s Al Muallaqat carries burnt rice, spices and wood smoke to recall communal kitchens and family gatherings, while a dynamic Japanese work is given beetroot, rhubarb and metallic notes to mirror the artist’s energetic technique.
The project is rooted in emotion: scent connects directly to feeling, often before we think about it. The guide Kathleen Vermeiren says she hopes the tour will help bridge cultures through the universal language of smell, linking memory and shared human history.
Art in Scents continues the museum’s work to reinterpret art for today’s audiences, adding an extra layer so visitors not only see but also sense history and culture - a simple idea with a powerful effect. I left feeling like I’d walked into paintings, not just looked at them.
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