Desmond Morris: Everything is Curiosity

All lives are made up of roads. Wide, narrow, winding, straight – with small intersections, sometimes just a street between the main arteries. Most often, dividing these avenues into three: family, work, and the time conventionally called 'free.' But then there are the fortunate ones who blend everything into a single vessel, sustained on the stem of a healthy obsession. This is Desmond Morris.

Starting with the donation of his scientific archive to the Museum of Science and Natural History at the University of Porto and the editions that were initially made of his extensive work under the label Arte e Ciência (Art and Science), we will travel along this unique road, understanding where his work intersects with what seems more ordinary to us, mere mortals.

Morris is immortal, it must be said. His work in ethology – not only human – in study and dissemination, will forever remain among the most comprehensive knowledge of our species.

But not only in content – also in form, the way he fulfilled 95 years of a full life, touching the right points on a unique path.

Morris is obsessive. Starting from the edition of The Naked Ape, we will understand his fascination with our behavior and how this fascination shaped a life dedicated to the behavior of all animals. From The Soccer Tribe, we will understand how a childhood detachment from the world's most conspicuous game became, when he took his adult son to a stadium, a fascination with dance and everything that involves 22 people behind a ball. In the section of The Creative Ape, we will understand how ethology became incorporated into his surrealist art, imitating life and the obsessions that were haunting him. And finally, through Watching, we will understand how even the most private life was always lived with the collaborative idea of a joint work – in this case, with his wife Ramona.

Everything in Morris is the same thing. Everything is branches of a single road, where work, family, and leisure have always been the same. There are no hobbies, no family life that is not, in itself, contaminated by his work, by his curiosity.

For Morris, everything is curiosity. And that is the name of his avenue. Everything is Wonder.