Feisty Female Friday: Maya Lin
The FFF this week is Maya Lin.
Maya is an American architect and sculptor best known for her design of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. She is the daughter of intellectuals who had fled China and studied architecture and sculpture at Yale. During her senior year she entered a nationwide competition sponsored by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund to create a design for a monument honoring those who had served and died in the war. Maya’s award-winning design consisted of a polished black granite V-shaped wall inscribed with the names of the men and women who were killed or are still missing in action.
The design aroused some controversy as it reflected the lack of resolution over the war and what constituted an appropriate memorial. A compromise was reached with the commissioning of a traditional statue depicting three servicemen with a flag to stand at the entrance to the memorial. After the monument’s dedication on the Mall in DC, it has become a very popular and thought-provoking memorial.
Maya next designed a monument for the civil rights movement on a commission from the SPLC, with the monument consisting of two elements: bearing the dates of the major events of the civil rights era and the names of 40 people who were martyrs to the cause. Her other artworks, from small sculptures displayed in galleries to large environmental installations, have taken their inspiration from the nature namely fields, rivers, and trees, all dedicated to the often unseen effects of climate change in the environment. Her art work along the Columbia River was created in honor of the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
Maya’s other large-scale architectural works can also be found at the Langston Hughes Library, MOCA, Smith College, and at Georgetown, Yale, Princeton, and Brown Universities, across the US, and in China, Mexico, South Korea, and Spain.
The feature-length film Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision, won the Oscar for best documentary. Maya was also awarded the National Medal of Arts and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
She remains an active environmentalist and is always working on new projects. Maya believes that the way to find a better future lies through facing and acknowledging our past. Her recent exhibition at the Smithsonian focused on history and human rights.
Maya today lives in NY City and is a widow with two daughters.