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.

[1] 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.

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.

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.”[5] Cumming is represented in the permanent collections of various major art museums, including: Cumming died on December 16, 2021, at the age of 78 from complications of Parkinson’s disease.