, Science Gallery London, 28 February to 12 May
THIS winter, curator Stephanie Delcroix’s new exhibition asks peculiar and pressing questions about the body.
It is nearly 65 years since Joseph Murray and a team at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston performed the first successful organ transplant (passing a kidney between identical twins Ronald and Richard Herrick), and still our imaginations are haunted by the mystery, menace and sheer potential of maintaining human life with spare parts.
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Exoskeletons and prosthetic limbs blur the distinction between human and machine, but it is beneath the skin where things get really weird. Organ transplants from other species are a real possibility, now that we can use CRISPR gene editing to inactivate viruses in piglet DNA that might be harmful to people. Fecal transplants, first developed to treat infections of Clostridium difficile, are being hailed as a possible weapon against the obesity pandemic. And maverick neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero garners headlines for his plans to transplant human heads. Researchers are even making artificial hearts out of foam.
Spare Parts will explore how our sense of ourselves is changing in response to these and other advances. Are we empowering ourselves, or losing ourselves? Are we perfecting our existence, or eroding any sense of what is good in life?
, Wellcome Collection, London 11 April to 15 September
NOW you see it: now you don’t – the link between magic and psychology, that is – in the Wellcome Collection’s exploration of prestidigitation, illusion, bias, suggestion and plain gullibility. Magic fans will coo over items from classic routines by Derren Brown, Tommy Cooper, Paul Daniels, Debbie McGee and Harry Houdini. And everyone can worry about what all this credulity means for politics.
, Whitechapel Gallery, London 14 February to 12 May
VISIONS of the future from leading architects and artists address new technologies, the environment, migration and resource scarcity in a homage to the groundbreaking 1956 Whitechapel Gallery exhibition, This is Tomorrow. Nearly a thousand people a day visited that exhibition, dubbed by one critic as “a game people will want to play”. Will today’s public be as receptive to new ideas?
, London 16 May to 26 August
BIG questions are posed in this interactive exhibition exploring creative and scientific developments in the world of artificial intelligence. New artistic commissions examine the boundaries between human and machine. There are also films, workshops and a concert series helmed by mathematician Marcus du Sautoy.
, London 16 October to 1 March 2020
HOW will we get to Mars, let alone survive there, let alone thrive? The Design Museum joins in this evergreen debate with an immersive exhibition that promises to give visitors a true sense of the surface of Mars, and the likely shape of human life, should we ever get there. From spaceships to habitats to the politics of a new society, Mars is a speculative designer’s dream.
This article appeared in print under the headline “Roll up to the future”