Maya Lin

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Maya Lin

Lin at the Museum of Glass
Born October 5, 1959 (1959-10-05) (age 49)
Athens, Ohio
Nationality United States
Field art, architecture, memorials
Training Yale University
Works Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Civil Rights Memorial

Maya Ying Lin (traditional Chinese: 林瓔; simplified Chinese: 林璎; pinyin: Lín Yīng; born October 5, 1959) is an American artist and architect who is known for her work in sculpture and landscape art. Her best-known work is the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.[1]

Contents

[edit] Personal life

Maya Lin, a Chinese American, was born in Athens, Ohio. Her parents emigrated to the United States from People's Republic of China in 1949 and settled in Ohio in 1958, one year before Maya Lin was born.[2] Her father, Henry Huan Lin, was a ceramist and former dean of the Ohio University College of Fine Arts, and her mother, Julia Ming Lin, was a 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.[3] Lin studied at Yale University, where she received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1981 and a Master of Architecture degree in 1986. She has also been awarded honorary doctorate degrees from Yale, Harvard University, Williams College, and Smith College.[4] She is married to Daniel Wolf, a New York photography dealer. They have two daughters, India and Rachel.[1]

Lin, having grown up surrounded by white people, has said that she "didn't even realize" she was Chinese until later in life, and that it was not until her 30s that she had a desire to understand her cultural background.[5] Commenting on her design of a new home for the Museum of Chinese in America near New York City's Chinatown, Lin attached a personal significance to the project being a Chinese-related project because she wanted her two daughters to "know that part of their heritage."[2]

[edit] Vietnam Veterans Memorial

Vietnam War Memorial original design submission by Maya Lin

In 1981, at age 21 and while still an undergraduate, Lin won a public design competition for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, beating out 1,420 other competition submissions.[6] The black cut-stone masonry wall, with the names of 58,253 fallen soldiers carved into its face,[7] was completed in late October 1982 and dedicated on November 13, 1982.[8] The wall is granite and V-shaped, with one side pointing to the Lincoln Memorial and the other to the Washington Monument.[7]

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 initially controversial for what was an unconventional and non-traditional design for a war memorial. Opponents of the design also voiced objection because of Lin's Asian heritage.[5][9][10] However, the memorial has since become an important pilgrimage site for relatives and friends of the American military casualties in Vietnam, and personal tokens and mementos are left at the wall daily in their memory.[11][12]

Lin believes that if the competition had not been "blind", with designs submitted by number instead of name, she "never would have won." She received harassment after her ethnicity was revealed - prominent businessman and later 3rd party presidential candidate Ross Perot was known to have called her an "egg roll"[13] after it was revealed that she was Asian. Lin defended her design in front of the United States Congress, and eventually a compromise was reached. A bronze statue of a group of soldiers and an American flag was placed off to one side of the monument as a result.

[edit] Work after the Vietnam Veterans Memorial

Sculpture of 2x4 on display at the De Young Museum in San Francisco, 2009

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).[14]

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 in which she spoke of the monument design process.

In 2000, Lin re-emerged in the public life with a book Boundaries.[15] 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.[16]

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. A trend toward minimalism and abstraction was noted among the entrants, finalists, and current World Trade Center Memorial.

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.photo At first the park was criticized for being relatively uninviting (with punchcard pits promoting mosquito infestation and preventing safe active recreation) 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. Although the university since planted trees around the park's perimeter in an attempt to make it a more popular place for students to gather, this has been unsuccessful.[17][18]

In 2008, Lin completed a 30-ton sculpture called "2 x 4 Landscape," which is on exhibit at the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco, California.[19] Her current projects include an installation at the Storm King Art Center.[20][21]

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c "Maya Lin". The New York Times. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/l/maya_lin/index.html. Retrieved on 2009-01-02. 
  2. ^ a b Paul Berger (2006-11-05). "Ancient Echoes in a Modern Space". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/05/nyregion/thecity/05maya.html. Retrieved on 2009-01-02. 
  3. ^ Peter G. Rowe and Seng Kuan (2004). Architectural Encounters with Essence and Form in Modern China. MIT Press. ISBN 9780262681513. http://books.google.com/books?id=9irZf11s4NkC. 
  4. ^ "Maya Lin: Systematic Landscapes". Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. http://72.5.117.194/content.asp?key=139. Retrieved on 2009-01-02. 
  5. ^ a b "Between Art and Architecture: The Memory Works of Maya Lin". American Association of Museums. July/August 2008. http://www.aam-us.org/pubs/mn/mayalin.cfm. Retrieved on 2008-12-30. 
  6. ^ "Vietnam Veterans Memorial". Library of Congress. http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/trm022.html. Retrieved on 2009-01-03. 
  7. ^ a b "Facts and Figures". Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund. http://www.vvmf.org/index.cfm?sectionID=539. Retrieved on 2009-01-03. 
  8. ^ "History". Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund. http://www.vvmf.org/index.cfm?SectionID=76. Retrieved on 2009-01-03. 
  9. ^ Marla Hochman. "Maya Lin, Vietnam Memorial". greenmuseum.org. http://www.greenmuseum.org/c/aen/Issues/lin.php. Retrieved on 2008-12-30. 
  10. ^ Kristal Sands. "Maya Lin's Wall: A Tribute to Americans". Jack Magazine. http://www.jackmagazine.com/issue9/essayksands.html. Retrieved on 2008-12-30. 
  11. ^ Gale - Free Resources - Women's History - Biographies - Maya Lin
  12. ^ Maya Lin - Great Buildings Online
  13. ^ Frank H. Wu (2001). Yellow: Race In America Beyond Black and White. Basic Books. pp. 95. ISBN 0465006396. http://books.google.com/books?id=ybl1AAAAMAAJ. 
  14. ^ Art:21 . Maya Lin's "Wave Field" PBS
  15. ^ Maya Lin emerges from the shadows
  16. ^ "A Meeting Of Minds". The Seattle Times. 2005-06-12. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/pacificnw06122005/coverstory.html. Retrieved on 2006-09-07. 
  17. ^ The Athens NEWS | Money spent on new OU park could have been better spent
  18. ^ Maya Lin's Bicentennial Park at Ohio University in Athens Ohio - IBM Punch Card Art is no Vietnam Veterans Memorial
  19. ^ Maya Lin looks at nature - from the inside
  20. ^ "Once Inspired by a War, Now by the Land". New York Times. November 7, 2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/09/arts/design/09kino.html. Retrieved on 2008-11-09. "On a gray, unusually muggy October day the artist and architect Maya Lin was showing a visitor around “Wave Field,” her new earthwork project at the Storm King Art Center here. The 11-acre installation, which will open to the public next spring, consists of seven rows of undulating hills cradled in a gently sloping valley." 
  21. ^ Cotter, Holland (May 7, 2009). "Art Review | 'Storm King Wavefield': Where the Ocean Meets the Catskills". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/arts/design/08lin.html. Retrieved on May 8, 2009. 

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