Similarly to Bread Givers’ Sara Smolinsky, Maya Lin is the daughter of immigrants who fled to the United States in 1948 before the 1949 Communist takeover of China. On the date of October 5, 1959, she was born in Athens, Ohio (Biography. com Editors). Lin’s parents were intellectuals who eventually became professors at Ohio University; teaching ceramics (father) and English (mother). As a result from accompanying her parents to the university, she and her brother (a poet) were encouraged to be creative.
Eventually, she attended Yale University and became a well-known artist, designer, architect, sculptor, and educator (Biography. com Editors). Notably, her aesthetic in her art incorporates nature, typography, and minimalistic elements. In the course of her education at Yale, Lin attended a funeral architecture course. Her final project for that class ended up being her most notable work: the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision).
At the time, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund hosted a nationwide competition for the best design to honor the soldiers of the Vietnam War and set requirements: “Subsequently, WMF set four major criteria for the design: (1) that it be reflective and contemplative in character, (2) that it harmonize with its surroundings, especially the neighboring national memorials, (3) that it contain the names of all who died or remain missing, and (4) that it make no political statement about the war” (Corporate Zen).
Initially, Lin’s design simply comprised of a reflective gabbro granite wall that had cut into the ground with the names of soldiers engraved into the stone. The names of soldiers are chronologically listed from 1959 to 1973 with a symbol next to it indicating the status of the soldier: a diamond for a confirmed death of a soldier, a cross for those missing or were prisoners of war, and, if a man returns alive, a circle will be inscribed around the cross (this situation has never happened)(Corporate Zen).
For two months, she wrote a two-page essay explaining the meaning and concept of the design. The judging of the entries were rigorous and a panel of judges were chosen which included: 2 architects, 2 landscape architects, 2 sculptors, and 1 humanitarian (Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision). Finally, it was announced that Maya Lin’s design was chosen to become the memorial. Due to its minimalistic design, controversy and criticism was vocal in expressing their displeasure; called a “Black Scar”, as something to be shameful about (Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision).
Mostly, the critics were emotionally charged veterans who viewed the design as an insult and called for the selection to be redone. As a result of this displeasure, Lin was called too Chinese (at times called “Gook”) and too female to design the memorial. The veterans did not relate to her because she looked like the people they were fighting and she would not have been drafted and known being in the Vietnam War because she was a woman. Eventually, a compromise was reached by adding a flagpole, a statue of soldiers, and, later on, a Vietnam nurse; against Lin’s wishes.
Lin justifies her design by explaining the purpose of a memorial in the 21st century, “about honesty... accept and admit that the pain has occurred in order for it to be healed” (Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision). The Vietnam Veterans Memorial has become one of the most visited memorials in the US. Next, another notable work of Maya Lin is the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama at the Southern Poverty Law Center. In the same fashion as the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the material used is granite but incorporates the element of flowing water.
First, the wall has the inscription from Martin Luther King Jr’s I Have A Dream speech,” “Until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream” with water constantly flowing down the wall. Meanwhile, the table has inscriptions of events, deaths, and public policy regarding the Civil Rights Movement in chronological order. It starts from the Supreme Court decision of Brown versus the Board of Education (1954) until the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. (1968).
Through these inscriptions, Lin says, “I realized that I wanted to create a time line: a chronological listing of the Movement’s major events and its individual deaths, which together would show how people’s lives influenced history and how their deaths made things better” (History). Montgomery, Alabama is the birthplace of the civil rights movement and the first capitol of the Confederacy, where the memorial is located makes the location historically meaningful.
Additionally, Maya Lin’s other notable works include: the Langston Hughes Library (1999), the Museum of Chinese America (2009), What is Missing? etc (Biography. com Editors). Lin received her her Master of Architecture from Yale in 1986. Her numerous awards include: Presidential Design Award, the Mayor’s Award for Arts and Culture, a National Endowment for the Arts artist’ award, the William A. Bernoudy Resident in Architecture fellowship from the American Academy in Rome, the Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, an AIA Honor Award, the Finn Juhl Prize, and honorary doctorates from Yale, Harvard, Williams, and Smith College, etc (Knowawall).
In conclusion, Maya Lin has designed several significant and best-known works of public art of the late 20th century. She is inspirational in that she is a woman in the architecture industry at the time when it was predominantly male dominated. Despite the harsh criticism she went through, she did not let others targeting her because of her gender and race interfere with her artistic integrity. Lastly, she designed a physical representation of history.
