Fragrance, Fashion, and Interiors of the Gilded Age
Join fragrance historian and educator Jessica Murphy for an illustrated lecture highlighting the stories behind a selection of perfumes released from the 1890s through the 1910s. Just like a work of visual art, fashion, or architecture, a fragrance can capture a specific time and place and may reflect technical innovations and new materials.
Gathering in the Carnegie Mansion’s Music Room, we’ll smell recreated historic fragrances together and consider them as artistic creations, technical innovations, design objects, and olfactory reflections of their cultural era.
This program is designed to follow the 3:00 p.m. public tour of the Carnegie Mansion, which will provide context for the time period and Music Room where the program will take place. Cooper Hewitt is housed in the historic Carnegie Mansion, built for industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie and his family between 1899 and 1902.
SCHEDULE
- 3:00 P.M.: Public tour of Carnegie Mansion (optional but highly recommended)
- 4:00 P.M.: Illustrated lecture and scent experience in the Music Room
SPEAKER
Jessica Murphy is a museum professional and fragrance historian whose work connects art, scent, and popular culture. She holds a Ph.D. in art history and has worked in research positions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. As manager of visitor engagement at the Brooklyn Museum, she created a series of scented gallery tours from 2019 to 2025. She has also lectured about fragrance through cultural venues including the Bard Graduate Center, the Corning Museum of Glass, and the Institute for Art and Olfaction and has been interviewed about perfume by media outlets including Vogue, The New York Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, InStyle, and Harper’s Bazaar. She shares her insights on olfactory and visual topics at her Substack, Show & Smell.
ACCESSIBILITY AND WHAT TO EXPECT
- Format: The program will begin with the public tour of the Carnegie mansion. The speaker will then present an illustrated lecture. Scent strips with period fragrance will be circulated. It will end with an optional Q&A with the audience. The audience will remain seated for the program.
- About the space: This program will take place in Cooper Hewitt’s mansion, including the tour of the first and second floors. The lecture takes place in the Music Room on the first floor. The audience seating area has seats with backs. The lecture and the mansion tour are both fully wheelchair accessible. There is an accessible restroom on the ground floor. Read more about accessibility at Cooper Hewitt.
- Accommodations: The lecture component of the program will have live CART captioning. We welcome questions and accommodation requests that support your participation. Email us at CHEducation@si.edu, call us at 212.849.8353, or let us know when you register. Please make your request as far in advance as possible—preferably at least ten days before the program date.
