Caro Verbeek
Caro Verbeek (1980) is an art historian and a curator with a focus on the lower senses. Her aim is to (re)construct a more sensory history of art by collecting and (re)creating historical scents and tactile impressions and by putting them in a cultural context.
Verbeek concluded her PhD on the role of smell in art history and the practicality of working with scent in museums at VU University in 2020, with IFF (International Flavours & Fragrances) and the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Furthermore she teaches the preliminary course “The Other Senses” at the Royal Academy of Arts (The Hague) and creates olfactory tours and interventions for museums (for example: Biblical Museum, Amsterdam, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven). Verbeek curates the only scent platform in the Netherlands called ‘Odorama’ at Mediamatic, Amsterdam.
Her books and articles include “Een kleine geschiedenis van de grote neus” (Atlas Contact, 2021), “Scented Colours” (Routledge, 2016) “Something in the Air – Scent in Art” (Villa Rot, 2015), “Inhaling Memories” (Senses & Society, 2013). Verbeek lectures regularly at venues worldwide such as TedX (Groningen, 2016), MSA Modernism Studies (Boston, 2015), Centre for Sensory Research, (Montreal, 2015), Goldsmiths’ (London, 2014), CAA Conference (New York, 2013) and Erasmus University (2012).
Since 2017 Verbeek is one of the judges of the Arts & Olfaction Awards.