NEW YORK — The nose rarely figures in the sensory experience of a museum visitor. That is about to change at one New York City museum.

The Center of Olfactory Art dedicated to scent as an art form was launched at the Museum of Arts and Design on Thursday.

“What we’re going to be able to do … with the center is place scent directly in the mainstream of art history and demonstrate that it is the equal of paintings, sculpture, architecture and all other artistic media,” said Chandler Burr, the former fragrance critic of The New York Times whom the museum said it hired as its — the nation’s — first curator of olfactory art.

More a curatorial department within the museum than a separate entity, the museum created the new center because “scent is a really interesting part of the world of design,” museum director Holly Hotchner told The Associated Press.

It fits the institution’s DNA as a “sensuous, sensory-orientated museum” where patrons can touch and feel many of the objects. And of course, smell is as much a part of the senses,” she added.

The center will present its first exhibition, “The Art of Scent, 1889-2011” next November, examining the reformulation and innovation of olfactory works by some of history’s best-known perfumers through 10 seminal scents.

An audio guide, narrated by Burr, will explain the context in which they were created. Each perfume will be identified only by artist and year to allow visitors to appreciate each as an independent work.

And don’t expect fancy fragrance bottles, brand perfumes, design graphics and packaging to be part of the exhibit.

Visitors to “The Art of Scent” will experience each fragrance along a 6-foot-wide path that will follow the curvature of the gallery wall where buttons on a specially-design atomizing machine will release “the work of art.”