Museums scent a safe way of staying in touch

MUSEUMS are considering exhibits children can smell rather than touch to adhere to new safety rules.

Instead of the standard hands-on displays which would be easily contaminated and impractical to clean, curious young visitors could more safely be immersed in scent.

Covid-19 has left museums across the country closed and left curators pondering how to responsibly welcome the public back when they reopen, with social distancing and other measures almost certainly in place.

While adults could obey the rules, children could struggle to refrain from touching, particularly when the kind of interactive exhibits seen in the Science or Natural History Museum are meant to be played with.

Experts on child-friendly attractions have suggested that handing out gloves and constantly scrubbing exhibits after youngsters have their fun would be impractical, and other senses should be invoked instead to capture their imagination. Campaigners at Kids in Museums have suggested that the Jorvik Viking Centre, where crackling fires conjure Dark Age aromas, shows how smell could replace touch in virus-conscious museums.

The attraction in York has previously experimented with bottling scents our ancestors encountered, including incense, aged leather, rotting meat and the communal cesspit.

“Smell is already used to great effect at some venues,” said Alison Bowyer, director of Kids in Museums, which advises on making exhibits child-friendly.

Social distancing and cleaning will both likely be key elements in any safe reopening of museums, which will reduce capacity and potential ticket sales, but also present challenges for staff keeping displays virus-free.

The use of virtual reality and other visually stimulating media has been suggested to bring exhibitions to life, with tablets and personal devices used to inject child-friendly fun into exhibitions without the need to touch surfaces.