All 151 Articles
Walking into the cavernous first-floor gallery of the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in Philadelphia—where “RE_________,” an exhibition by the Norwegian-born, Berlin-based artist Sissel Tolaas is currently on view (through Dec. 30)—feels l
Growing up in the Midwest, I wasn’t exposed to the widest range of foods. True to the Scandinavian heritage and harsh widoro wat. But out of all these first experiences of more far-flung tastes and flavors, none stands out in my memory as sharply a
It’s late August, and I’m walking on Grand Street in Lower Manhattan. It’s one of those summer evenings that’s cooler thAlex Tatarsky, and as I head east from the subway, I pass through the dense, networked scents of the edge of Chinatown: the briny tanthe famous bialy shop. Approaching Abrons Art Center, where Tatarsky is doing pick-up rehearsals for an out-of-town run of their show Dirt Trip, this close-packed olfactory landscape opens up into something with more space: a faint vegetal whiff from a small vaca
A blooming magnolia tree, decked out in its distinctive, cup-shaped flowers, is one of the most welcome and fragrant sig
In 2020, the Noguchi Museum opened “The Sculptor and the Ashtray”—an intimate, one-room exhibition chronicling the artist’s pursuit to create the perfect ashtray. The negative space empA Space, to make a collection of hand-carved bowls, produced from special material—Lebanese cedar—that has a signature balsamic
Most Read
The pleasantly sweet, sharp scent of freshly cut grass can conjure up visions of baseball fields, backyards, or the colo
Though rooted in Buddhism’s reverence for nature, shinrin-yoku (“forest bathing”) traces its origins to 1982, when Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries coined and
Drawing on the West Coast’s fresh atmosphere and spirit, Louis Vuitton’s ongoing Cologne Perfumes collection conjures upoud, a heady essence derived from agarwood trees.)
Michael Hingson was in his office at the data-protection agency Quantum on the 78th floor of the World Trade Center’s Tower One when hethud of the first airplane hitting the building, 15 floors above. Hingson, who has been blind since birth due to an eye diso
A species of cypress native to central Japan, hinoki is prized for its deeply fragrant scent, and its soft-wood timber is used to build a range of buildings and interiors—fHinoki is not only a material, it is a spiritual and aesthetic concept,” says Italian expat Iacopo Torrini of Kobe-based Bartok Design, a top exporter of the wood. “Hinoki grows straight. Its color is light and its fragrance is fresh but delicate.” Despite its ubiquity in modern times, he aHinoki symbolizes purity and sincerity, therefore it is the preferred choice for buildings dedicated to the gods, as in the sh
“Most of my memories are strongly shaped by smells,” says Mackenzie Reilly, who became captivated by the fragrance worldInternational Flavors & Fragrances, Reilly routinely thinks about aromas in terms of a specific field of creative expression—architecture—as she builds a
As the overpopulated, multibillion-dollar fragrance industry introduces hundreds of scents every year, choosing one that4160 Tuesdays, and Samantha Scriven, who runs a blog called iscentyouaday, lend their encyclopedic knowledge of aromatic liquids to their upcoming book, The Perfume Companion: The Definitive Guide to Choosing Your Next Scent (Frances Lincoln), out next week on Kindle and in hardcover on November 9. Fluent in the science behind the olfactory sy
