Lin, Maya

born Oct. 5, 1959, Athens, Ohio, U.S.

U.S. architect and sculptor.

The daughter of intellectuals who had fled China in 1948, she achieved fame in 1981 when her class assignment at Yale University won the nationwide Vietnam Veterans Memorial competition. Lin's award-winning design consisted of a polished black granite V-shaped wall inscribed with the names of the approximately 58,000 men and women who were killed or missing in action; the abstract nature of the design aroused a great deal of controversy. Her subsequent, vastly different designs include the major commissions for the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Ala. (1989), and the Women's Table at Yale (1993), as well as an earth sculpture for the University of Michigan (1994) and an extraordinary translucent clock, Eclipsed Time, installed in the ceiling of New York City's Pennsylvania Station (1994).

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▪ 1995

      For sculptor/architect Maya Lin, 1994 was a busy year. In August her translucent clock, Eclipsed Time, was installed in the ceiling of Penn Station in New York City. Looking much like a flying saucer, the 4.3-m (14-ft)-wide elliptical frosted glass clock was illuminated from above. A metal disk, moving slowly across the glowing oval, cast an ever-changing shadow on the numerals below (12:00 was a total eclipse). She also saw the completion of her first two houses, one on each coast.

      Lin was a college senior in 1981 when her design was chosen for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. In the years that followed her instant fame, Lin showed great versatility, refusing to become typecast as a creator of memorials.

      Lin was born on Oct. 5, 1959, in Athens, Ohio. Her parents, Julia Chang Lin, a poet, and Henry Huan Lin, a ceramicist, emigrated to the U.S. from China in the 1940s. As a child, Lin enjoyed spending time alone, reading, hiking, and making pottery in her father's studio. A high-school course on existentialism and its fascination with death sparked her interest in cemeteries and memorial statuary.

      For a class assignment while studying architecture at Yale University, Lin was required to enter the nationwide Vietnam memorial competition. Her design consisted of two low black granite walls that intersected to form a wide "V." Engraved on the mirrorlike stone surface were the names of the more than 58,000 U.S. dead and missing-in-action who served in the Vietnam War. When Lin's winning entry was announced, a number of veterans' groups and others protested. Eventually, a compromise was reached, and a traditional statue depicting three servicemen with a flag was commissioned to stand at the entrance to the memorial site. After its dedication in 1982, however, Lin's wall became one of the city's most visited and most moving tourist attractions.

      After graduating from Yale, Lin attended Harvard University. She retreated from the spotlight to work briefly for a Boston architectural firm before returning to Yale for graduate studies (1983-86). Lin then struck out on her own, working out of a New York City loft studio. Her vastly different designs included an earth sculpture for the University of Michigan (1994) and a corporate logo. Concentrating on sculpture much of the time, Lin completed numerous small pieces and two important large commissions—the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Ala. (1989), and The Women's Table at Yale (1993). She also designed a loft conversion for the Museum for African Art in New York City (1993). (MARGARET BARLOW)

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▪ Chinese-American sculptor and architect

born October 5, 1959, Athens, Ohio, U.S.

 

 American architect and sculptor who is best known for her design of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.

 The daughter of intellectuals who had fled China in 1948, Lin received her bachelor's degree in 1981 from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, where she studied architecture and sculpture. During her senior year she entered a nationwide competition sponsored by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund to create a design for a monument honouring those who had served and died in that war. Lin's award-winning design consisted of a polished black granite V-shaped wall inscribed with the names of the approximately 58,000 men and women who were killed or missing in action. This minimal plan was in sharp contrast to the traditional format for a memorial, which usually included figurative, heroic sculpture. The design aroused a great deal of controversy, reflecting the lack of resolution of the national conflicts over the war, as well as the lack of consensus over what constituted an appropriate memorial at the end of the 20th century. Eventually, 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 Lin's monument was dedicated on the Mall in Washington, D.C., on Veterans Day in 1982, however, it became a popular and moving tourist attraction.

      Lin sought anonymity by returning to academia, beginning graduate studies in architecture at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In early 1983 she left Harvard to work for a Boston architect, but in 1986 she completed a master's in architecture at Yale. In 1988 Lin agreed to design a monument for the civil rights movement on behalf of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Her design consisted of two elements: a curved black granite wall inscribed with a quotation from Martin Luther King, Jr., and a 12-foot- (3.7-metre-) diameter disk bearing the dates of the major events of the civil rights era and the names of 40 people who were martyrs to the cause. Water flows gently over both parts of the memorial. The Civil Rights Memorial was dedicated in Montgomery, Alabama, in November 1989.

      Among her other large-scale works are Topo, a topiary park in Charlotte, North Carolina; Women's Table, a sculpture commemorating the coeducation of women at Yale; and Groundswell, an installation of 43 tons of glass pebbles at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio. In 2000 Lin was commissioned to create a series of seven art installations along the Columbia River to honour the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. These pieces, which ranged in size and scale from a fish-cleaning table inscribed with the Chinook origin story to a pedestrian bridge spanning a state highway, examined the historical impact of the Corps of Discovery on the native peoples of the Pacific Northwest. In 1995 a feature-length film, Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision, written and directed by Freida Lee Mock, won the Oscar for best documentary.

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