Robert Cumming (artist)

Robert Cumming (artist)
Robert Hugh Cumming (October 7, 1943 – December 16, 2021) was an American painter, sculptor, photographer, and printmaker best known for his photographs of conceptual drawings and constructions, which layer meanings within meanings, and reference both science and art history.
Education
1965, BFA, Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, MA
1967, MFA, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL.
Early life
Cumming grew up just outside of Boston, MA. He earned a BFA in 1965 from Massachusetts College of Art in Boston and an MFA in 1967 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Career
His first teaching position was at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, where he was involved with mail art, an early conceptual art movement that conferred art status on items sent through the postal system. In 1970, Cumming moved to southern California to lecture on photography, and in 1974, he started teaching at the University of California, Los Angeles. In 1978, Cumming moved back to New England, where he continued to teach and make art.
Work and themes
Photography
Cumming studied photography in graduate school, studying with Art Sinsabaugh. In the beginning he used photography as a means of documenting sculptural works, but eventually “the works became as much about photographic documentation as about the objects.”
Exhibitions
Solo exhibitions
Robert Cumming: The Secret Life of Objects, the George Eastman Museum and the California Museum of Photography, UC Riverside, 2019–2020.
Group exhibitions
Mirrors and Windows: American Photography since 1960, Museum of Modern Art, NY, July 26 - October 2, 1978.
Art by Telephone, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL, November 1 - December 14, 1969.
9 Artists/9 Urban Spaces, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN, September 1 - October 5, 1970.
Minor White, Robert Heinecken, Robert Cumming: Photograph as Metaphor, Photograph as Object, Photograph as Document of Concept, California State University, Long Beach, October 8 - November 12, 1973.
Picture Puzzles, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, August 12 - November 16, 1975.
Whitney Biennial 1977: Contemporary American Art, February 19-April 3, 1977.
Collections
Institutional representation
Cumming is represented in the permanent collections of various major art museums, including:
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
The Baltimore Museum of Art
The Art Institute of Chicago
The Dallas Museum of Art
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
The Denver Art Museum
The George Eastman Museum, Rochester
The Minneapolis Institute of Arts
The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Honolulu Museum of Art Spalding House (formerly The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu).
Personal life and death
Cumming died on December 16, 2021, at the age of 78 from complications of Parkinson’s disease.
References
Sources
Baltimore Museum of Art, 14 American photographers: Walker Evans, Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Paul Caponigro, William Christenberry, Linda Connor, Cosmos, Robert Cumming, William Eggleston, Lee Friedlander, John R. Gossage, Gary Hallman, Tod Papageorge, Garry Winogrand, Baltimore, Baltimore Museum of Art, 1975.
MIT List Visual Arts Center, Three on technology: New Photographs by Robert Cumming, Lee Friedlander, Jan Groover, Cambridge, Mass., MIT List Visual Arts Center, 1988.
Turnbull, Betty, Rooms, Roments Remembered, Robert Cumming, Michael Davis, Roland Reiss, Richard Turner, Bruce Williams, Newport Beach, Calif., Newport Harbor Art Museum, 1978.
Yager, David, Frames of reference, photographic paths: Zeke Berman, George Blakeley, Eileen Cowin, John Craig, Robert Cumming, Darryl Curran, Fred Endsley, William Larson, Bart Parker, Victor Schrager, the Starn twins, Baltimore, Visual Arts Dept., University of Maryland, Baltimore County, 1989.
1943 births
2021 deaths
Massachusetts College of Art and Design alumni
20th-century American painters
American male painters
21st-century American painters
American photographers
University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee faculty
Artists from Worcester, Massachusetts
UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture faculty
20th-century American sculptors
American male sculptors
20th-century American printmakers
Sculptors from Massachusetts
Nut artists
20th-century American male artists
University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign School of Art and Design alumni