What does art smell like? While the scents of paint thinner, pigments, and stone might come to mind, the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA) has decided to take a different approach.
Since its reopening in 2022 after an 11-year renovation, the KMSKA has been doing things a little differently. The development of a museum perfume is another way to stand out. Although international museums such as MoMA and the Rijks Museum already have their own fragrances, this perfume is a first for Belgium.
“How do you translate the pleasure gardens of the Flemish Masters into scents? What notes allow you to carry the classical halls of the KMSKA on your skin? And how do you distill the striking architecture of the new museum into a delightful concentrate? We invite you to discover the answer for yourself with an exclusive KMSKA perfume”, the museum writes on its website.
The Inspiration behind the perfume
The scent was developed by Laura de Coninck, a former Belgian journalist and artist who—after discovering her love for scents and meeting perfumer Sonia Constant—retrained as a perfumer through a Master’s in Olfactory Art at the Belgian PXL School.
After meeting KMSKA’s director, Carmen Willems, at an exhibition, the idea of developing a KMSKA scent took shape. De Coninck drew inspiration from the museum’s collections and artists’ studios throughout history.
The fragrance composition
The perfume features a blend of natural ingredients, including:
- Vetiver from Haiti
- Patchouli from Indonesia
- Cedarwood from Texas
- Fragrant myrrh (opopanax) from Somalia
- Centifolia roses
- Bourbon geranium
- Cinnamon bark oil
- Bergamot from Italy
- Black pepper from Madagascar
The ingredients were sourced from sustainable harvests and ecological farming where possible, while the packaging minimises paper use and avoids coatings or cellophane.
The bottle design
As for the bottle design, this was the work of graphic designer An Eisendrath, who based the artwork on Rubens’ Garden of Love.
“The pleasure garden is one of the perfume themes and the woodcut was enlarged so much that it becomes abstract. Also the Clair-Obscur idea was extended here, the central theme of this perfume: a technique that plays with light and dark. It combines dark fragrance notes with extremely light and transparant ingredients . Like this the perfume breathes the contrast between the darker, classical museum section and the white modern wing”, de Coninck wrote on Instagram.
The KMSKA perfume is available at the museum shop or online for €145.
