Gummer was born in Louisville, Kentucky, on December 12, 1946, and grew up in Indiana. He studied at Ben Davis High School, Indianapolis, and then at the Herron School of Art from 1964 to 1966. From 1966 to 1970, he studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts, and then completed his studies at the Yale School of Art where he received his Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) and Master of Fine Arts (MFA), and studied with David von Schlegell.
Gummer's first solo show was in 1973. Since then, his works have been featured at two dozen solo shows at museums and galleries around the East Coast and Midwest. His work has also been exhibited in group shows.
Born to Dorothy Ann (nee Jacobson) and william Adolph Gummer, he was raised with five brothers, william, Jack, Richard, Steven, and Mark. Gummer was briefly married in the early seventies to Peggy Lucas, but divorced shortly after. Gummer married Actress Meryl Streep in 1978. They have four children: musician Henry Wolfe, model Louisa, and actresses Mamie and Grace. Gummer and Streep are active Philanthropists who donate to a range of arts organizations and educational institutions, including Vassar College, Opus School in Harlem, and the Silver Mountain Arts Foundation.
Gummer's commissioned works have included Primary Compass (2000), a site-specific outdoor permanent sculpture at the Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio and a sculpture/fountain in Historic New Harmony, New Harmony, Indiana. One stainless steel and stained glass sculpture, Southern Circle, standing 25 feet (7.6 m) tall and weighing approximately 20,000 pounds, was commissioned by the city of Indianapolis and dedicated in October, 2004. "Primary Separation", a permanent installation at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, was completed in 2006.
Critic Irving Sandler (writing in Art in America, January 2005) has noted that Gummer's work is recognizably rooted in constructivism, but also writes that "in extending and deflecting Constructivist art in a new direction, Gummer has rendered it peculiarly contemporary." Sandler also writes that Gummer's works "give postmodern life to classic principles of abstract composition."
