Photo: Michael Schmelling
Artist Rachel Morrison is spending her lunch breaks these days at the Museum of Modern Art. Her goal: to sniff her way through their entire library and live to tell about it.
As a recent study concluded she will encounter “a combination of grassy notes with a tang of acids and a hint of vanilla over an underlying mustiness” in many of the books. She will also encounter many that will make her sneeze and feel nauseas.
Her plan is to begin with the first book in the Library of Congress classification system, which in this case is AC5.S4 a 1934 publication titled Sermons by Artists and she will end with ZN3.R45 Bibliography of the History of Art. Morrison is also recording her impressions of each sniff in a journal.
(click to enlarge)
A friend and MoMA bibliographer David Senior says of her undertaking “It’s a daring idea…because some of our books smell really bad.”
To date Morrison has nosed through 150 books. She has 299,850 left! I hope she survives.
Article in New York magazine