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.
Mission
The organization states the following as its mission:
"Awarded to just four perfumes and one experimental project a year, 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."
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.
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. The Sadakichi Award was added as "a new category aimed at recognizing innovative uses of scent beyond the bounds of commercial perfumery" - 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 take place in May 2017 at Silent Green kulturquartier in Berlin. The finalists are announced yearly at Esxence in Milan.
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), they are closed to larger-scale perfume releases - a space already served by The Fragrance Foundation's Awards. In that capacity they have been compared 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.”
Several further systems were put into place to ensure fairness, including blind, multiple-phase judging. The result was what Luca Turin called '[...]the only fluff-free fragrance contest in the world'.
There are two artisan category winners out of ten finalists, two independent category winners out of ten finalists, and one Sadakichi Award for Experimental Work with Scent winner out of five finalists per year. Winners each receive a golden pear statuette.