There's nothing stopping you from smelling the exhibits at the Natural History Museum. Go take a whiff of a mummy!
this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2026
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WHY WOULD A MUSEUM KEEP A MUMMY IN IT?
To prevent them from walking around, duh.
So you can smell it.
I’ve wanted to start one for a while. The big challenges are keeping materials fresh, avoiding cross contamination, and olfactory fatigue. There are some fragrance molecules that really fatigue your olfactory nerves and it can take hours before they become detectable again.
Actually this makes things even more interesting imho as it allows or even demands a sophisticated museum and exhibition concept.
Yeah it would still go hard. I would call it an “aromatorium”.
This might be of interest to you!
Interesting idea, but I think olfactory fatigue (aka going "nose blind") would get you fairly quick.
Is there a way to reset your nose after olfactory fatigue? Sorta like a palate cleanser for your nose?
When I went to buy fancy cologne for a wedding they had little bowls of coffee beans that were supposed to be palate cleansers. I cannot vouch for how well they worked, I felt like my nose was blown out after a few samples.
Smell-o-vision 🤣
But seriously, that sounds so cool!
Nope! It was called Odorama!
https://www.facebook.com/reel/959365976149363
I had friends that went to Boston to see Polyester in 1981 - those scratch and sniff cards were a hit in Ms. Chase's homeroom English class in 11th grade.
Years ago I got to visit the perfume lab at the Fashion Institute of Technology in NYC, where students learn about making perfumes.
It was kinda like this! They had rows and rows of little bottles all filled with concentrated oils of different aromas. Probably the weirdest one I remember is "money". I cracked it open, and sure enough, it smelled just like a stack of well used bills.
Was a really cool experience. Maybe see if there's a perfumer anywhere near you who would let you come explore their lab?
Dusty electronics with vacuum tubes encased in urea-formaldehyde plastic and tweed speaker covers, ungrounded and made a heavy clunk sound when starting and stopping. Smells like the early 80s.
vacuum tubes
early 80s
?
There is, or once was, such an exhibit at the Exploratorium in San Francisco in the 1980s. They have you smell things via tubes and you try to guess what it is. Science museum. It’s since moved to the piers. So I’ve heard. It used to be cheap to go there; now, I’ve read it’s very expensive.
What’s neat about this idea is that it doesn’t need a whole building. It could be mailed! I know this isn’t exactly what you meant, but you could start here.
find some nostalgic smell to bring you back to a moment in your past.
He's gonna bring you back to the past.
To smell all the things that smell like shitty ass.
He'd rather smell, a rotten buffalo, taking a diarrea dump in his nose!
He'd rather smell the rotten asshole, of a roadkill skunk and down it with beer!
Every museum is a smell museum and every piece of art is scratch-and-sniff if you're brave enough
Exhibit A: Corpse pile, bubonic plague, Toscana, 1351
Exhibit B: Pirate beard, Queen Anne's Revenge, 1718
Exhibit C: Blood spattered pyramid, Aztec Empire, 1501
Exhibit D: Neolithic footwear, Anatolia, ca 7200 BCE
Quentin Tarantino rushing for exhibit D
I believe these actually exist in some form!
The ones I've read about in the past are more art exhibitions than a conventional museum, but have a look and see if there's something like that near you!
Now that we can use the internet to access almost anything you’d want to see and/or hear,
Why, would that factor in?
Well my thought process was that smell is something you can't get over the internet. Like you could see images or videos of art and sculptures and stuff, but not smells.
Okay, I gotcha, I am not 100% sure of this, but does not Smell science say, part of smell comes from sights & sounds combinations? Like it Taste science says Smells play a big role?
I want to smell and taste the blue whale candies from my youth. They were different and I miss them.
This makes me think about vellichor! And the smell of piñon in the first cold spell of fall.
I think it is a great idea.