On         Thu, 2 Nov 1995 Jeff Kupperman <[log in to unmask]> said:



>Has anyone heard of a museum of scents anywhere in the world?

I can't answer this question, but I direct the reader's attention to the
following passage taken from Joris-Karl Huysman's _A Rebours_.  (This
translated as "Against Nature" by Robert Baldick. Penguin Books, p. 119.)

"For years now he had been an expert in the science of perfumes; he
maintained that the sense of smell could procure pleasures equal to those
obtained through sight or hearing, each of the senses being capable, by
virtue of a natural aptitude supplemented by an erudite education, of
perceiving new impressions, magnifying these tenfold, and co-ordinating
them to compose the whole that constitutes a work of art.  After all, he
argued, it was no more abnormal to have an art that consisted of picking
out odorous fluids than it was to have other arts based on a selection of
sound waves or the impact of variously coloured rays on the retina of the
eye; only, just as no one, without a special intuitive faculty developed by
study, could distinguish a painting by a great master from a paltry daub,
or a Beethoven theme from a tune by Clapisson, so no one, without a
preliminary initiation, could help confusing at first a _bouquet_ created
by a true artist with a potpourri concocted by a manufacturer for sale in
grocers' shops and cheap bazars."
--
______________________________________

Robert A. Baron
Museum Computer Consultant
P.O. Box 93, Larchmont, NY 10538
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