lives in Providence, RI. [40], Lin was commissioned by Ohio University to design what is known as Input in that institution's Bicentennial Park,[41] a landscape designed to resemble a computer punch card. "[25] After she completely understands the definition of the site, Lin finalizes her designs by creating numerous renditions of her project in model form.

Americans have never been entirely comfortable with competitions. [8], According to Lin, she has been concerned with environmental issues since she was very young, and dedicated much of her time at Yale University to environmental activism. Lin has been awarded honorary doctorate degrees from Yale University, Harvard University, Williams College, and Smith College. It was all the more astonishing because of its creator, an unknown, 21-year-old student with no professional experience. Listed chronologically, the names run Though she majored in architecture, Lin was far from an architect.

", TenBrink, Marisa. Maya Lin was still an undergraduate at Yale University when she beat out over 1,400 competitors in a competition to design the memorial. Two dozen members of Congress wrote President Reagan, decrying the memorial “as Maya Lin's Vietnam Veterans Memorial design submission, entry number 1026. They kept Lin’s design and added a sculpture that had won third place in the design competition, Frederick Elliot Hart’s “Three Soldiers,” nearby. those who gave their lives in a confusing mix of patriotism and grief? than a host to a plinth. a political statement of shame and dishonor.” Yet the rightness of Lin's The jury, which judged the entries blind, agreed. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC.

In 2010, a study even found that visiting the wall multiple times can help Vietnam veterans better cope with post-traumatic stress. For veterans, the toll was even greater.

Lin’s design was in sharp contrast to other war memorials. Maya Ying Lin, born October 5, 1959, is an American architect and sculptor. The wall’s detractors used everything from Lin’s age to her ethnicity to her as reasons the design should be changed or abandoned altogether. HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, she has been profiled in, among others, TIME, The New York Times Magazine and The New Yorker. She created it as part of a college architecture class that challenged students to make an entry for the national design competition for the planned memorial. roadblocks to getting the project to completion, and the eventual overwhelming made public, "Most of the memorial is already there. The sculptures are balanced on the deepest point of the sea. According to one commentator, Lin constructs her works to have a minimal effect on the environment by utilizing recycled and sustainable materials, by minimizing carbon emissions, and by attempting to avoid damaging the landscapes/ecosystems where she works.[12]. Search the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund's database of names on the wall. (2009–present), (Various locations, web project), This page was last edited on 27 September 2020, at 03:43.

of reviews by various commissions and regulatory agencies, even if it was It was a source of controversy at the time because of the unusual design and drew protests from a group of Vietnam veterans.

The 1996 documentary about her, Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision, won the Academy Award for Best Documentary. [8] In 1987 she was among the youngest to be awarded an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts by Yale University. Thus this memorial is for those who have died, and for us to remember them. Maya Lin: Topologies, a monograph spanning the past 30 years of her career was first released in Fall 2015 by Skira Rizzoli and is in its second printing. understood that the memorial's views to the Washington Monument and the Lincoln In 1981, at 21 and still an undergraduate, Lin won a public design competition to design the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, to be built on the National Mall in Washington D.C. She describes the piece as a drawing instead of a sculpture. “Walking through this park-like area, the memorial appears as a rift in the earth, a long, polished, black stone wall, emerging from and receding into the earth. [43] The sculpture itself is evocative of the swelling movement of water, which is juxtaposed with the dry materiality of the lumber pieces. "Maya Lin's Environmental Installations: Bringing the Outside In," 4.

Learn about the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in this brief introductory video. symbolism.