SUL NASO: A CULTURAL HISTORY
BOOK PRESENTATION & CONVERSATION
With Caro Verbeek
Art historian and olfactory researcher
A cultural history of smell and the ways we perceive, remember and understand the world.
Fondazione Maddalena Di Giacomo welcomes Caro Verbeek for a presentation and conversation around Sul naso. Una storia culturale, published in Italy by Il Saggiatore.
DATE
Wednesdy, 14 October 2026
LOCATION
Fondazione Maddalena Di Giacomo
Palazzo Valier, Venice
About the Event
Why has smell, despite its profound relationship with memory, emotion and everyday experience, remained one of the most overlooked senses in Western culture?
In Sul naso. Una storia culturale, Caro Verbeek moves between art, history, science and everyday life to explore the cultural history of smell and restore the nose to its role as an instrument through which we perceive, remember and understand the world.
The conversation at Fondazione Maddalena Di Giacomo extends the book’s investigation into the wider territory of sensory history, exploring how cultural values shape perception and how the senses can offer different ways of approaching art, history and material culture.
The presentation will be followed by a book signing and forms part of a two-day programme with Caro Verbeek at Palazzo Valier, continuing on 15 October with Scent as Presence, a sensory experience dedicated to olfactory jewellery, memory, identity and the culture of wearing scent.
The programme forms part of the Fondazione’s ongoing research into olfaction, memory, emotional heritage and multisensory experience.
About Caro Verbeek
Caro Verbeek is an art historian and olfactory researcher specialising in the sensory history of art, with particular attention to olfaction. Her work investigates smell as a historical, cultural and aesthetic medium, and the ways in which sensory experience can transform our understanding of art and material culture.
Her interdisciplinary practice brings together art history, material culture and sensory research, exploring how smell shapes perception, memory and our relationship with the past. Her research has reached international audiences through her TEDx talk, The Historical Significance of Smell, dedicated to the role of scent in experiencing and understanding history.
At Fondazione Maddalena Di Giacomo, Verbeek’s research enters into dialogue with the Fondazione’s ongoing investigation into olfaction, memory, emotional heritage and multisensory experience.
Event Information
Date: Wednesday, 14 October 2026
Location: Fondazione Maddalena Di Giacomo, Palazzo Valier, San Polo 1022, Venice
Admission includes: Book presentation and signing, and admission to La Nota Mancante
Capacity: Limited
Booking: Reservation required