In Memoriam This week, we honor a surrealist and zoologist, a monochrome abstractionist, and a pillar of Oakland’s Chinatown. April 22, 2026 — 6 min read Desmond Morris on October 15, 1990, in Paris (photo by Ulf Andersen/Getty Images) In Memoriam  is published every Wednesday afternoon and honors those we recently lost in the art world. Desmond Morris (1928–2026) British zoologist, television presenter, and artist Among the nearly 50 books, as many articles, and the many TV episodes he presented , his book The Naked Ape (1967) stood out as groundbreaking and influential (and controversial) for framing modern humans as fundamentally ape-like. But he was also a painter of what he called "biomorphs" who showed his surrealist work alongside that of artists like Joan Miró, and famously experimented with giving art tools to Congo the chimp.…