When we take into consideration the search to gradual getting old, maybe nobody is extra monomaniacal in regards to the pursuit than American tech entrepreneur Bryan Johnson, who reportedly spends round $2 million per year on anti-aging therapies and has change into infamous on-line for his rigorous routine.
His mission — to halt his physique’s pure response to time and gravity — consists of quite a few hours within the fitness center, intermittent fasting, pink mild remedy and swallowing over 100 dietary supplements every day. At one level, he controversially coordinated trigenerational blood transfusions, injecting his 17-year-old son’s plasma and passing his personal to his 70-year-old father. In 2025, he claimed to have efficiently slowed down his organic getting old course of a lot that he has a birthday each 19 months.
Johnson’s fixation could sound dystopian, however it’s not uniquely fashionable. In truth, the query of getting old nicely is one thing Shamita Sharmacharja, curator at London’s Wellcome Collection, ponders in her newest exhibition — “The Coming of Age” — a present that sweeps throughout 5 centuries, together with greater than 120 artworks and objects that take care of the truth of rising older, from the liberty and pleasure it can supply, to the accompanying sickness and anxiousness. Its contents vary from Nineteenth-century anti-aging capsules, to biologist Charles Darwin’s strolling stick, to placing nude self-portraits by then-sexagenarian British photographer John Coplans.
“When I said I’m working on an exhibition about aging, (reactions were) invariably the same,” she mentioned within the gallery area through the exhibition preview. People sighed, slumped their shoulders, or replied with the melancholic resignation that “it comes for us all.” The response Sharmacharja, who wished to embrace within the showcase “where our attitudes to aging come from.”
The collection of objects reveal how our obsession with reversing the clock is, really, outdated information. It begins with a medieval woodcut from 1536, by which a throng of aged folks crowd right into a spring-like tub, flinging their strolling sticks within the air and rising smooth-skinned, plump and spritely. This fantasy of regenerative waters has lengthy captured human creativeness — although now, the so-called Fountain of Youth just isn’t a lot a fantastical pool as it is the identify of any variety of magnificence serums, moisturisers and aesthetics clinics.
Discussions round getting old have maybe by no means felt extra charged, or extra pervasive than of late. Wrinkles, solar spots and sagging pores and skin have change into so demonized, that even youngsters — many years away from this actuality — and increasingly men, beforehand exempt from this ruinous magnificence customary, have began to worry, anticipate and put together for his or her arrival. Facelifts, beforehand a rarefied surgical procedure for the over-60s crowd, have been embraced by those under 40 and even 30. It was as soon as an irrefutable truth {that a} visage would change with life’s seasons, however now an alternate actuality has emerged: the “forever 35” face.
Yet because the exhibition notes, life expectations at the moment are rising greater than some other time in historical past. This presents its personal catalogue of points. An extended life does not equate to a contented one, as one’s monetary means drastically influence not solely how rapidly we age, however our high quality of life. In quick: wealth is well being. This disparity was significantly stark through the Covid-19 pandemic, which Sharmacharja mentioned “really highlighted the way we talk about age.” Almost in a single day, being older was mentioned completely by way of “vulnerability and responsibility,” mentioned Sharmacharja. But the pandemic — which disproportionately impacted lower-income communities and ethnic minorities — additionally uncovered well being inequality on a worldwide stage in actual time. “The fact that there’s a gap when we’re born, and it just gets wider and wider as we get older,” she mentioned.
2000), additionally on show on the Wellcome Collection.” class=”image_large__dam-img image_large__dam-img–loading” onload=’this.classList.remove(‘image_large__dam-img–loading’)’ onerror=”imageLoadError(this)” height=”2000″ width=”1509″ loading=’lazy’/>Sharmacharja wished the present to strike a stability: difficult ageism with out diminishing the true expertise of mid-life anxiousness, and the difficult actuality of sickness and caring obligations. A single photograph from Elinor Carucci’s collection “Midlife” — a images collection capturing the primary indicators of getting old as seen by her and her companion — immortalizes the invention of an early sprouting gray hair. Elsewhere, Paula Rego’s two self portraits from 2017 present the artist howling by expressive pastel strokes. After a critical fall at 81, Rego discovered solace in remaking her bruised face on paper. “I didn’t like the fall,” she is quoted within the exhibition as saying. “But the self-portraits I liked doing. I had something to show.”
Across the exhibition, it rapidly turns into clear that the concept of rising older is about as elastic as a pair of pull-on pants. There is a cheeky, mischievous look on the face of sculptor and artist Louis Bourgeois, then aged 70, in {a photograph} taken by her pal Robert Mapplethorpe; whereas a 2022 video by the activist artist Gisèle Lalonde embraces her greying, silvering locks — which she affectionately known as her “hag hair.” In one other nook, two ornately framed photos by Diana Kaumba, a stylist based mostly in New York, depict a vogue shoot for her grandmother in Zambia. Posing with stacked gold platform heels and crystal-embellished sun shades, Kaumba’s grandmother rebels in opposition to the stereotype of a muted, dowdy aged lady by the medium of energy dressing.
Aging nicely, invariably, means various things to completely different folks. Of course, there may be Johnson’s ilk — these we’d outline as chasing uncanny self-preservation at any monetary value. (Clips from the Netflix documentary in regards to the millionaire, “Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever,” play on repeat within the exhibition subsequent to a Nineteen Seventies dewar flask as soon as used within the pseudo-science of cryogenics). A {smooth} brow, lack of wrinkles, quantifiable, low organic age is the aim for some. Self-acceptance, independence and dignity is the last word prize for others. In testimonies gathered by the Centre for Ageing Better and displayed within the exhibition, many merely outline getting old nicely as monetary safety — life with much less fear, extra relaxation.
“I’ve come out of researching the show having a more realistic view about aging,” mentioned Sharmacharja. “And seeing that each stage of our life is really enriched, and constrained, by the stories that we tell about it.”