The Art and Olfaction Awards
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Company type | Non-profit |
|---|---|
| Industry | Perfume, Art, Olfactory art |
| Founded | 2013 |
| Headquarters | |
Area served | Worldwide |
| Parent | The Institute for Art and Olfaction |
| Website | www |
The Art and Olfaction Awards are a non-profit award mechanism designed to celebrate excellence in international artisan, experimental and independent perfumery and olfactory art through a yearly blind-judged competition.
The organization states the following as its mission:
"The Art and Olfaction Award is designed to raise interest and awareness for independent and artisan perfumers - and experimental practitioners with scent - from all countries. By shining a spotlight on perfumery's most outstanding creators, we hope to help generate support for independent practices in perfumery as a whole. The Art and Olfaction Awards are a program of The Institute for Art and Olfaction, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization based in Los Angeles, USA."[1]
History
The Art and Olfaction Awards were founded in 2013 as a program of The Institute for Art and Olfaction in Los Angeles. The first awards ceremony took place in April, 2014, at Goethe Institut Los Angeles. At this first event, awards were given in two categories: Independent and Artisan.[2]
In 2015, the awards expanded upon their existing categories by adding The Sadakichi Award for Experimental Work with Scent - named after the critic and writer Sadakichi Hartmann in honor of his failed scent concert from the early 20th century.[3] The Sadakichi Award was added as "a new category aimed at recognizing innovative uses of scent beyond the bounds of commercial perfumery"[4] - joining the artisan and independent awards to create what was intended as a broad snapshot of the diversity and creative potential in the field of perfume.
The third annual Art and Olfaction Awards were held on May 6, 2016 at Hammer Museum as part of their public programming. The expanded event was hosted by artist and producer Zackary Drucker, and was free, open to the public, and live streamed on the internet.
In an effort to better cement the award's international commitment, the fourth annual Art and Olfaction Awards took place in May 2017 at Silent Green kulturquartier in Berlin, after which the awards continued to travel to different countries: The fifth awards took place at The Tabernacle, Notting Hill in London (April 21, 2018), and the sixth awards took place at Oude Kerk, Amsterdam in Amsterdam (May 2, 2019).
In 2020, the awards were held online due to the pandemic. Because of the pandemic, also, the awards were not held in 2021. They returned for the eight edition in 2022, being hosted in Miami as part of the World Perfumery Congress.
In 2023 they returned to Los Angeles, at the Cicada Club. It was in 2023 also that the Institute for Art and Olfaction launched a week long festival of scent called Scent Week, which was designed to celebrate independent perfumery in the region, in an international context.
From 2024 onwards, the Institute for Art and Olfaction opted to regularly host the awards in different cities. On odd numbered years the awards would be held in Los Angeles, and on even numbered years they would be held in a new city, outside the United States.[5] In 2024 the awards were held in Lisbon at Casa do Alentejo, and in 2025, for the twelfth edition, they were held in Los Angeles again—again in the context of the Scent Week festival.[6] For several years, the finalists were announced in Italy, at Esxencein Milan.[7]
The Art and Olfaction Awards were created as mechanism to impartially judge and promote work being done by artisan perfumers, independent perfume houses, and creative practitioners working with scent in the context of arts or experimental practices. Limited to artists, artisan perfumers and independent perfume houses (which they define as brands that are independently owned, or owned by another independently owned company[8]), they are closed to larger-scale perfume releases - a space already served by The Fragrance Foundation's Awards.[9] Founder Saskia Wilson-Brown explained it in an interview:
″The awards are for independent, artisan and experimental practitioners with scent. And by independent brands we mean folks that have a company that is not owned by a conglomerate. There are different understandings of artisan, and we’ve had many debates about this, but as it stands it refers to companies or brands that are owned or co-owned by the perfumer who makes the formulas, so the creative is at the top."[10]
In that capacity they have been compared[11] to the film industry's Independent Spirit Awards. Indeed, the awards were created based on founder Saskia Wilson-Brown's experience with film festivals:
"The awards represented a chance to apply what I learned in the film festival world to the perfume world. In fact, we adapted many of the structures that go into running a film festival for the Art and Olfaction Awards, namely: Low entry fees, [...] unbiased judging (in many film festivals you are excluded from judging a film that you have a personal tie to), a diversity of judges, and a non-profit art for arts-sake motivation."[12]
Several further systems were put into place to ensure fairness, including blind, multiple-phase judging.[13] Additional systems included a code of ethics, which listed several points the judges were expected to adhere to, including recusing themselves from any submission that they recognized or had a financial stake in.[14] The result was what Luca Turin called '[...]the only fluff-free fragrance contest in the world.[15]
Each edition of the awards has two artisan category winners, two independent category winners, and one Experimental Work with Scent winner. In 2018 and subsequent years, additional categories were added by the organization, including the Art and Olfaction Contribution to Scent Culture Award, the Art and Olfaction Visionary Award, and the Art and Olfaction Newcomer Award.[16] Winners each receive a golden pear statuette.
The Art and Olfaction Awards has an iterative logo designed by California Institute of the Arts graduate Micah Hahn. The logo design changes with every year the awards are held.
Judges
Judges for the Art and Olfaction Awards are pulled from creative fields, internationally. Notable judges have included writer Andrew Berardini, cultural critic Arabelle Sicardi, artist Bettina Hubby, perfumer Christophe Laudamiel, chef Daniel Patterson, writer Harold McGee, perfume expert Katie Puckrik, critic and biochemist Luca Turin, artist Maki Ueda, perfumer Mandy Aftel, artist Marcos Lutyens, artist Peter De Cupere, designer Stefan Sagmeister, artist Steven Gontarski, artist Zoe Crosher, and more. [17]