Maya Lin

Maya Lin
Born October 5, 1959(1959-10-05) (age 48)
Athens, OhioNationality United StatesField sculptureTraining Yale UniversityWorks Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Civil Rights Memorial

Maya Ying Lin (Chinese: 林瓔; pinyin: Lín Yīng; born October 5, 1959) is an American artist who has become known for her work in sculpture and landscape art. Her best-known work is the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.

1 Early life
2 Vietnam Veterans Memorial
3 Work after the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
4 Bibliography
5 Quotes
6 References
7 External links

Early life

Lin was born in Athens, Ohio, daughter of Henry Huan Lin, a ceramist and former Dean of the Ohio University College of Fine Arts, and Julia Chang Lin, formerly Professor of Literature at Ohio University.[1] She is the niece of Lin Huiyin, who is said to be the first female architect in China.

She studied at Yale University (1986). In 1987, Yale conferred upon Lin an honorary Doctorate Degree in Fine Arts. She is married to Daniel Wolf, a New York photography dealer. They have two daughters: Rachel Wolf and India Wolf.[2][3]

Vietnam Veterans Memorial

Original competition submission for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

In 1981, at age 21 and while still an undergraduate, she won a public design competition for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The black cut-stone masonry wall, with the names of fallen soldiers carved into its face as requested by the families of the casualties, officially opened to the public on November 13, 1982. The wall is granite and V-shaped, with one side pointing to the Lincoln Memorial and the other to the Washington Monument. Lin's conception was to create an opening or a wound in the earth to symbolize the gravity of the loss of the soldiers. The design was originally controversial but has since been much acclaimed and is visited by hundreds of thousands of tourists every year. It has also become an important pilgrimage site for relatives and friends of the American military casualties in Vietnam, and personal tokens and mementos are daily left at the wall in their memory.[4][5]

Visitors at Vietnam Veterans Memorial

If the competition hadn't been a blind one, in which designs were submitted by number instead of name, "I never would have won," she says. Some groups criticised the memorial because of its non-traditional design, but Lin successfully defended her design in front of the United States Congress. Eventually a compromise was reached and a bronze statue of a group of soldiers was placed off to one side of the monument.[6]

Work after the Vietnam Veterans Memorial

Lin, who now owns and operates Maya Lin Studio in New York City, went on to design other structures, including the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama (1989) and the Wave Field at the University of Michigan (1995).[7]

In 1994, she was the subject of the Academy Award-winning documentary Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision. The title comes from an address she gave at Yale where she speaks of the monument design process.

In 2000, Lin re-emerged in public life with a book Boundaries.[8] Also in 2000, she agreed to act as the artist and architect for the Confluence Project, a series of outdoor installations at historical points along the Columbia River and Snake River in the state of Washington. This is the largest and longest project that she has undertaken so far.[9]

In 2002, Lin was elected Alumni Fellow of the Yale Corporation, the governing body of Yale University (Upon whose campus sits another of Lin's designs: the Women's Table - designed to commemorate the role of women at Yale University.), in an unusually public contest. Her opponent was W. David Lee, a local New Haven minister and graduate of the Yale Divinity School who was running on a platform to build ties to the community with the support of Yale's unionized employees. Lin was supported by Yale's President Richard Levin, other members of the Yale Corporation, and was the officially endorsed candidate of the Association of Yale Alumni.

In 2003, Lin served on the selection jury of the World Trade Center Site Memorial Competition. Some have attributed the trend toward minimalism and abstraction among the entrants, finalists, and current World Trade Center Memorial to Lin's presence on the jury.

In 2005, Lin was elected to The American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York.

Lin was commissioned by Ohio University to design what is known as punch card park, a landscape literally designed to resemble a punch card, supposedly based on Lin's memories of their early use in universities. The park is a large open space with rectangular mounds and voids on the ground. At first the park was criticized for being relatively uninviting and lacked trees or structures to shade students from the sun. In addition from the ground level it is difficult to tell what the park is supposed to look like, though from an aerial view it does resemble a punch card. The university since planted trees around the parks perimeter making it a more popular place for students to gather.[10][11]

Bibliography

Maya Lin: Topologies (Artist and the community) (1998) ISBN 1888826053
Maya Lin: [American Academy in Rome, 10 dicembre 1998-21 febbraio 1999] (1998) ISBN 8843568329
Timetable: Maya Lin (2000) ASIN B000PT331Y (2002, ISBN 0937031194)
Boundaries (2000) ISBN 0684834170 (2006, ISBN 0743299590)

Quotes

"In all my work I have tried to create works that present you with information allowing you the chance to come to your own conclusions; they ask you to think."[citation needed]
"The process I go through in art and architecture, I actually want it to be almost childlike."[citation needed]