Mary-Ann Unger was born in New York in 1945 and began sculpting as a child in art classes at the Museum of Modern Art. After receiving her bachelor's degree from Mount Holyoke College in 1967 and spending a year in graduate school at the University of California at Berkeley, Unger traveled for several years. She returned to graduate school and finished with a master of fine arts degree from Columbia University in 1975. Her sculpture depicts arched structures that suggest Islamic architecture as well as boughs of trees. Unger has shown these works in public exhibitions such as Ode to Tatlin (1991) at the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College. 

The artist was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1985 and transformed her sculpture into dark, bulbous, beamlike forms that she often laid out or propped up in clusters that were made out of lightweight plaster and steel armatures. Unger's work is in the collections of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, the Brooklyn Museum of Art and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She lived with her husband Geoffrey Biddle until passing away in 1999 at the age of 53.  

The Temple, 1987
Aluminum
Gift of Philip and Muriel Berman
Asa Packer Campus

LUS 88 1010