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Date: Wednesday, November 18, 2026
6pm – 7:30pm ET
Location: The Morbid Anatomy Collection and Library at Industry City, Morbid Anatomy, 254 36th Street, 2-2-C251, Brooklyn, NY 11232 (direction here)
Long before people became accustomed to thinking about perfume as a purely pleasurable luxury product, fragrance fulfilled a range of deeper, even darker, cultural and societal needs. From their uses as ritual offerings, poisons, and plague prevention to their modern identity at the perfume counter, scents have often bottled and transmitted strange stories. This multi-sensory presentation will tell the tales of several aromas that struck fear or wonder into people's hearts (and noses) in various eras. We'll also sniff a selection of present-day perfumes that reinterpret those tales by mixing hedonic appeal with historical or literary references.
Jessica Murphy is a museum professional and fragrance historian whose work connects art, scent, and popular culture. She holds a PhD in art history and has worked at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of Modern Art. As manager of visitor engagement at the Brooklyn Museum, she created a series of scented gallery tours. She has lectured about fragrance through cultural venues including the Bard Graduate Center, the Corning Museum of Glass, and the Institute for Art and Olfaction and she has been interviewed about perfume by media outlets including Vogue, The New York Times, InStyle, and Harper’s Bazaar. She writes about olfactory and visual topics at her Substack, Show & Smell.
Date: Wednesday, November 18, 2026
6pm – 7:30pm ET
Location: The Morbid Anatomy Collection and Library at Industry City, Morbid Anatomy, 254 36th Street, 2-2-C251, Brooklyn, NY 11232 (direction here)
Long before people became accustomed to thinking about perfume as a purely pleasurable luxury product, fragrance fulfilled a range of deeper, even darker, cultural and societal needs. From their uses as ritual offerings, poisons, and plague prevention to their modern identity at the perfume counter, scents have often bottled and transmitted strange stories. This multi-sensory presentation will tell the tales of several aromas that struck fear or wonder into people's hearts (and noses) in various eras. We'll also sniff a selection of present-day perfumes that reinterpret those tales by mixing hedonic appeal with historical or literary references.
Jessica Murphy is a museum professional and fragrance historian whose work connects art, scent, and popular culture. She holds a PhD in art history and has worked at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of Modern Art. As manager of visitor engagement at the Brooklyn Museum, she created a series of scented gallery tours. She has lectured about fragrance through cultural venues including the Bard Graduate Center, the Corning Museum of Glass, and the Institute for Art and Olfaction and she has been interviewed about perfume by media outlets including Vogue, The New York Times, InStyle, and Harper’s Bazaar. She writes about olfactory and visual topics at her Substack, Show & Smell.