Hot Tickets 2019 Food and the Gut Go on Show As Angolan ‘Sea Monsters’ Resurface and Alexander Von Humboldt Pops Into Focus

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A visitor examines some of Leonardo da Vinci’s writing at the Water as Microscope of Nature exhibition at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy. Hot tickets 2019 Food and the gut go on show as Angolan ‘sea monsters’ resurface and Alexander von Humboldt pops into focus. The year is also a feast of anniversaries, from the eclipse proving Albert Einstein right to Leonardo da Vinci’s death — and the first footfall on the Moon. Nicola Jones reports.

Alexander von Humboldt Sea Monsters Unearthed: Life in Angola’s PaleoAngola unearthed a new dinosaur Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany. Ancient Seas species, the long-necked sauropod Until 27 January. National Museum of Natural History, Angolatitan adamastor; a host of sea turtles Prussian polymath and explorer Alexander Washington DC. (pictured); and giant marine reptilian von Humboldt’s 250th birthday rolls Until 2020. plesiosaurs and mosasaurs. Full-scale around this September. The ‘father Some 130 million years ago, the reconstructions and fossils will be on of environmentalism’ is credited with supercontinent Gondwana was being display at the US National Museum of envisioning geology, ecology and humanity ripped apart, forming Africa and South Natural History. Meanwhile, the museum’s as part of an interconnected web. Less well America. The South Atlantic Ocean David H. Koch Hall of Fossils will open known is his role in early photography. emerged between them. Today, Angola is a on 8 June with Deep Time, featuring INNOCENTI/UFFIZI GALLERIES M. DEGL’ In 1839, Humboldt was among the first hotspot for tracking the sea’s biological 700 specimens and the return of a established scientists to embrace the record: it is the only African nation with Tyrannosaurus rex fossil. daguerreotype, invented by Louis-Jacques- known outcrops of fossil- Mandé Daguerre and Nicéphore Niépce. On bearing rocks from this Microbiota: The Inside Story of Our show will be photo albums from Humboldt’s period. In 2005, after Body’s Most Underrated Organ collection — one a present from British decades of war, a major Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie, Paris. photographic innovator William Henry Fox geological expedition Until July. Talbot; another with some of the first-known reached the In 2014, microbiology student

photographs of Mexico, Venezuela and Cuba. region. Projecto Giulia Enders penned a book SMITHSONIAN

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capturing the range of Leonardo’s interests, Light on Leonardo from painting and music to engineering and botany, will feature across a dozen shows The luminary of art and science in the in UK cities from Belfast to Sheffield. Then, Italian Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci, from 24 May to 13 October, they will be part died 500 years ago this May. The of an exhibition featuring 200 drawings (an anniversary will be marked across Europe. example pictured) at the Queen’s Gallery in London (including two apparently blank Water as Microscope of Nature: pages that under ultraviolet light reveal faded Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex Leicester studies of hands). From 22 November 2019 Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy. to 15 March 2020, 80 of these will grace the Until 20 January. Queen’s Gallery in Edinburgh. Here’s a chance to gaze at some of Leonardo’s spellbinding scientific Leonardo da Vinci and Perpetual Motion: explorations, not far from his Tuscan Visualizing Impossible Machines birthplace. The Codex Leicester, on Peltz Gallery, Birkbeck University of London. loan from Microsoft founder Bill Gates, 6 February – 12 March. is a 72-page, mirror-written notebook. Featured will be digital reconstructions and in this room have been under restoration It features beautiful images of the 3D printouts of ‘perpetual motion’ machines for several years. A virtual tour of what movement and erosive capacity of water, designed by Leonardo. Models of perpetual Milan looked like in Leonardo’s time is also an explanation of why fossils are found on wheels that appear in two of his famous in the offing. mountains, speculation that the Moon’s notebooks (the Codex Forster II and the shine is caused by surface water, and Codex Atlanticus) are included. Leonardo da Vinci more. The codex will also be on display, The Louvre, Paris. with two others, in Mind in Motion at the Milan and Leonardo 24 October 2019 – 24 February 2020. British Library in London, from 7 June to Milan, Italy. At this blockbuster show, drawings 8 September. 2 May onwards. (some from Britain’s Royal Collection) This nine-month extravaganza in the artist- will be shown along with many of Leonardo da Vinci: A Life in Drawing scientist’s adopted city kicks off with the the 17 paintings now attributed to Across Britain. reopening of the Sala delle Asse in Sforza Leonardo. They join his five notable 1 February – 6 May. Castle on 2 May. The nature-inspired murals paintings held by the Louvre, including One hundred and forty-four drawings that Leonardo painted for the Duke of Milan the Mona Lisa.

on the digestive system, Gut (in her native By the Light of the Silvery Moon stereographs of the lunar surface by Neil German, Darm mit Charme, or ‘Charming National Gallery of Art, Washington DC. Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, and iconic Bowels’). The bestseller inspired this 28 April – 14 October. photos from early uncrewed orbiters. Also exhibition, produced with the French National On 20 July 1969, Apollo 11 delivered on view will be French astronomer Charles

ELIZABETH II 2018 ELIZABETH Institute for Agricultural Research among astronauts to the Moon for the first time. To Le Morvan’s 1914 photogravures (richly other bodies, and with Enders’s input. mark the 50th anniversary, 50 lunar portraits detailed etched copper plates produced RCT/HER MAJESTY QUEEN MAJESTY RCT/HER The show (pictured) echoes the book’s spanning more than a century feature here. from photographic negatives): an attempt to lighthearted approach to shadowy topics such On show will be a stereograph of the Moon, systematically map the visible lunar surface. as the workings of sphincters inner and outer, taken by English astronomer Warren de la and the benefits of squatting for defecation. Rue in the 1850s; alongside will be close-up Food Victoria and Albert Museum, London. 18 May – 17 November. How we gather, hunt, grow and process food has changed dramatically, from the invention of agriculture some 10,000 years ago to the creation of weight-loss supplements. This exhibition looks at the science and politics

PHILIPPE LEVY/EPPDSCIPR of what we eat, from urban farming to synthetic, lab-grown meat fibres and algae- coated spheres of water. New commissions and pieces from the museum’s collection will examine how we can make food more sustainable, tasty and ethically just.

Natalia Goncharova Tate Modern, London. 6 June – 8 September. In the early twentieth century, Russian avant-garde artist Natalia Goncharova and her partner Mikhail Larionov developed rayonism — an artistic style drawing inspiration from contemporary scientific

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Screen and stage

Drama, film and television programmes in 2019 will grapple with Ebola, space travel, the disturbing roots of gynaecology and

more. FS-HUF-PG/SHF FRANCO STELLA,

Behind the Sheet Ensemble Studio Theatre, New York City. 9 January – 3 February. Controversial nineteenth-century surgeon Marion Sims developed an operation for vesicovaginal fistula, a birth complication that leaves women incontinent. Egregiously, he experimented without anaesthesia on enslaved women of colour in Alabama. They had no power to refuse or consent. Playwright Charly Evon Simpson tackles the An artist’s impression of the Humboldt Forum in Berlin, opening in late 2019. story in a drama exploring the experiences of three of them — Anarcha, Lucy and breakthroughs. The discoveries of X-rays The Future and Arts Betsey (pictured, Naomi Lorrain, who plays and radioactivity prompted the artists Mori Art Museum, Tokyo. Philomena, the doctor’s enslaved assistant). to represent material reality beyond the 19 November 2019 – 29 March 2020. reach of the human eye, through fractured Technology is intruding ever further into shapes and dynamic lines representing light. our everyday lives, from the artificial Descriptions of a mystical ‘fourth dimension’ intelligence that guides smartphone voice by Russian mathematician Peter Ouspensky activation to blockchains used to ‘mine’ in the early 1900s resonate in their work, too. cryptocurrency. This exhibition asks artists Also on show will be Goncharova’s futurist to reflect on what life might be like a few body art, and set and clothing designs. decades in the future — for better or for ENSEMBLE STUDIOS THEATRE ENSEMBLE STUDIOS worse. Total Solar Eclipse La Silla Observatory, Chile. Medicine Galleries 2 July, 16:39. Science Museum, London. This year’s total solar eclipse will be visible Opening in 2019. only from South America and the Southern At more than 3,000 square metres, these Pacific Ocean — a fitting moment for La galleries will offer a permanent space for Ad Astra Twenty years after his father Silla Observatory as it celebrates its first contemplation of the human body and disappeared on a mission to Neptune, a half-century. La Silla marks this portentous health in London’s Science Museum. Some US Army Corps engineer (Brad Pitt) sets alignment with talks, tours and workshops 2,500 artefacts from its archives, and those out to discover what happened, in this for eclipse-chasers. The year is a big one for of the Wellcome Collection across town, will blockbuster film directed by James Gray. astronomy and physics in other ways, too. illuminate 500 years of medical history. A US release: 24 May. The International Astronomical Union turns 3.5-metre sculpture will greet visitors — 100, and May sees another centenary: that of the work of Marc Quinn (best known for The Hot Zone In 1989, the US Army and astronomer Arthur Eddington’s momentous Self, a series of casts of his own head in Centers for Disease Control and Prevention use of a total solar eclipse to secure the frozen blood). Called Self-Conscious Gene, spun into action when an Ebola outbreak first experimental proof of Albert Einstein’s it portrays the late Canadian artist Rick killed dozens of monkeys in a primate general theory of relativity. Genest, who covered his body with tattoos facility just outside Washington DC. The of his skeleton and organs. gripping tale of the response, as told in the Graffiti as Devotion along the Nile 1995 book of the same name by Richard Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, Ann Arbor, The Humboldt Forum Preston, will play out in a television mini- Michigan. Berlin Palace. series on National Geographic this year. 23 August 2019 – 5 January 2020. Opening end of 2019. Juliana Margulies plays real-life virologist In Kush, an ancient kingdom in what is Berlin’s massive, €595-million Nancy Jaax, who at the time was chief of now Sudan, many pilgrims left their mark (US$674‑million) museum and event the pathology division at the US Army on temples and pyramids starting around space is set to rival London’s British Medical Research Institute of Infectious 300 bc. Archaeologists examining the Museum. This ‘palace for all’ — named after Diseases in Frederick, Maryland. A major graffiti have found inscriptions in ancient naturalist Alexander von Humboldt and twist awaits. Egyptian and Greek describing everything his diplomat brother Wilhelm — will house from festivals to diplomatic missions. This old and new collections, including those Gemini Man Director Ang Lee show explores hundreds of pieces of pictorial of the Ethnological Museum of Berlin and presents a sci-fi action-thriller featuring graffiti — including horses, a man with a the Museum of Asian Art. The Humboldt Will Smith as an ageing assassin who bow and a giraffe — discovered in a rock-cut Laboratory will be dedicated to showcasing must fight a younger clone of himself. temple by Kelsey Museum archaeologists in research from the city’s Humboldt US release: 4 October. El Kurru, northern Sudan. University. ■