ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author intends to shift the attention by focusing on aspect of sensation that is an important aspect of the multisensory museum experience: smell. It looks at interrelation of sensory curating practices, specific notions on sexual attractiveness and bodily experience at the Deutsches Hygiene-Museum in Dresden, a medical history and science museum. The chapter provides an ethnographic narration of the workings and interpretations of purposely used and unintended smells at the sexuality exhibition that is part of the permanent exhibition at the Deutsches Hygiene-Museum as its initial point, and weaves in commentary from other ethnographic studies in order to irritate and contextualize specific notions of the olfactory. The objects and installations in the sexuality hall of the Hygiene-Museum are diverse, and leave ample space for individual narratives on sexual experiences and identities to be represented. A representational reading of the sexuality exhibition would easily reveal the heteronormative and socio-biological assumptions that play out in learning about attraction.
