This statue is on a pedestal above a sunken landscaped area in the rear courtyard garden of the University's School of Civic Design. It is beside a pedestrian route generally open to the public which runs between Mulberry Place and Cambridge Street and is best accessed from the gate next to the University Press building, itself adjacent to The Cambridge pub in Cambridge Street near its junction with the south western corner of Abercrombie Square. Mitzi Solomon Cunliffe (1918-2007)was an American sculptor who married a Mancunian academic and worked in Britain from 1949 to 1976. In 1957, Mitzi designed the bronze screen depicting the Wars of the Roses, for the restaurant in Lewis's department store. She later bought the screen back and installed it in her home in the south of France.
However, she is most famous for designing the the golden theatrical mask that is the BAFTA, The British Oscar.

Source: The Guardian Unlimited, Obituary 12.2.07
http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,2011198,00.html

Alan Maycock © 2007