Maya Lin facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Maya Lin
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Lin in 2023
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Maya Ying Lin
October 5, 1959 Athens, Ohio, U.S.
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| Nationality | American |
| Education | Yale University (BA, MArch) |
| Known for | Land art, architecture, memorials |
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Notable work
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Vietnam Veterans Memorial (1982) Civil Rights Memorial (1989) |
| Spouse(s) |
Daniel Wolf
(m. 1955; died 2021) |
| Awards | National Medal of Arts Presidential Medal of Freedom |
| Maya Lin | |||||||
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| Traditional Chinese | 林瓔 | ||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 林璎 | ||||||
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Maya Ying Lin (born October 5, 1959) is an American architect, designer, and sculptor. She was born in Athens, Ohio, to parents who had moved from China. Maya Lin studied architecture at Yale University.
In 1981, while still a student at Yale, she became famous across the country. She won a national competition to design the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.. Her design was in a simple, modern style called minimalist architecture. At first, some people didn't like it, but it later became very important and well-known.
Since then, Lin has designed many memorials, buildings, landscapes, and sculptures. In 1989, she created the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama. She also has an older brother, the poet Tan Lin.
Even though she is best known for memorials that remember history, Maya Lin also creates art about the environment. These works often show how nature is changing or being harmed. She says she gets ideas from nature's beauty but believes her art can never be as beautiful as nature itself. She also finds inspiration from different cultures, like Japanese gardens and ancient Native American earth mounds.
Contents
Early Life and Education
Maya Lin grew up in Athens, Ohio. Her parents moved to the United States from China in the late 1940s. Her father, Henry Huan Lin, was a ceramist (someone who makes pottery) and a dean at Ohio University. Her mother, Julia Chang Lin, was a poet and a literature professor at Ohio University.
Maya Lin has said that she didn't really think about being Chinese until she was in her 30s. She also said she didn't have many friends growing up and loved to study. While in high school, she took classes at Ohio University. There, she learned how to cast bronze, which is a way of shaping metal. She finished high school in 1977 and then went to Yale University. She earned her first degree in 1981 and a master's degree in architecture in 1986.
Caring for the Environment
Maya Lin has cared about environmental issues since she was very young. She spent a lot of her time at Yale University working on environmental causes. She believes her interest in nature came from growing up in rural Ohio. The ancient Hopewell and Adena Native American burial mounds nearby inspired her early on.
Lin says much of her work focuses on how people connect with their environment. She creates "earthworks," sculptures, and art installations that show this connection. She explained, "I'm very much a product of the growing awareness about ecology and the environmental movement... All of my work is about slipping things in, inserting an order or a structuring, yet making an interface so that in the end, rather than a hierarchy, there is a balance and tension between the man-made and the natural."
Her art often brings attention to hidden histories of landscapes and environments that people might not notice. She highlights how humans affect the environment, drawing attention to problems like global warming, endangered water bodies, and animal extinction. She explores these issues in her recent memorial project, called What Is Missing?.
Maya Lin also tries to make her artworks have a small impact on the environment. She uses recycled and sustainable materials and tries to avoid harming the natural areas where she works. She has also served on the board of trustees for the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group.
Vietnam Veterans Memorial
In 1981, when she was only 21 and still a college student, Maya Lin won a public competition to design the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. This memorial was planned for the National Mall in Washington D.C. Her design was chosen from 1,422 entries.
Her design featured a black granite wall with the names of over 57,000 soldiers who died in the war carved into it. The wall was shaped like a "V," with one side pointing towards the Lincoln Memorial and the other towards the Washington Monument. This simple, modern design was different from older war memorials. The memorial was finished in late 1982.
Lin said she wanted to create an opening or a "wound" in the earth. This would symbolize the pain of the war and its many losses. She imagined "taking a knife and cutting into the earth, opening it up, and with the passage of time, that initial violence and pain would heal."
Her winning design caused some debate at first. People questioned its simple style, her young age, and her Asian background. Some didn't like that only the names of the dead soldiers were included. Others complained about the dark color of the granite, saying it seemed too sad. Maya Lin defended her design to the US Congress. A compromise was made: a bronze statue called Three Soldiers and an American flag were placed near Lin's design.
Despite the early arguments, the memorial has become a very important place. Many family members and friends of the soldiers visit it. They often leave personal items and memories there. In 2007, a survey by the American Institute of Architects ranked it among America's favorite buildings. It is now one of the most visited sites on the National Mall. It also serves as a memorial for veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.
Maya Lin once said that if the competition had not been "blind" (meaning designs were judged without knowing the designer's name), she "never would have won." This is because she faced harassment after her ethnicity was known. For example, a famous businessman, Ross Perot, made a rude comment about her.
Later Works and Projects
Maya Lin now runs her own design studio in New York City. After the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, she created many other projects. These include the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama (1989) and the Wave Field outdoor art piece at the University of Michigan (1995).
Selected Artworks and Designs
- Peace-Chapel (1989): An open-air chapel on a mountain, designed to connect peace, art, and nature. It has a circle of stones for seats and the sky as its ceiling.
- Wave Field (1995): Located at the University of Michigan, this artwork was inspired by ocean waves. Lin wanted to capture the movement of water in the earth itself.
- Confluence Project (2000): A series of outdoor art pieces along the Columbia River and Snake River in Washington and Oregon.
- Eleven Minute Line (2004): An earthwork in Sweden inspired by the ancient Serpent Mounds in Ohio. It's a walkway that takes about eleven minutes to complete.
- Waterline (2006): Made of aluminum tubing, this piece is a to-scale drawing of the Mid-Atlantic ridge, an underwater mountain range. Viewers can walk on it.
- Bodies of Water series (2006): Sculptures made of wood layers that show three endangered bodies of water: the Black Sea, Caspian Sea, and Red Sea. Lin wanted to highlight unseen ecosystems that are being polluted.
- Input (2004): A landscape design at Ohio University that looks like a computer punch card. It relates to Lin's early interest in computer programming.
- Above and Below (2007): An outdoor sculpture at the Indianapolis Museum of Art made of colored aluminum tubing.
- 2 × 4 Landscape (2008): A large sculpture made of many pieces of wood, shown in San Francisco. It looks like swelling water but is made of dry lumber.
- Wave Field (2008): A larger version of her earlier Wave Field, located at the Storm King Art Center in New York. It covers 4 acres and combines the idea of water's motion with the earth.
- Museum of Chinese in America (2009): Lin designed a building for this museum in New York City's Chinatown. This project was very personal to her.
- Silver River (2009): Her first artwork on the Las Vegas Strip. It's an 84-foot (26 m) cast of the Colorado River made from recycled silver. Lin wanted to make a statement about saving water.
- Pin River - Sandy (2013): Created after Hurricane Sandy, this artwork showed the flood zone of the hurricane using pins. Lin wanted to raise awareness about how natural oyster beds and salt marshes used to protect New York City from storms.
- A Fold in the Field (2013): Her largest work so far, built from earth and covering 3 hectares in New Zealand.
- What Is Missing? (2009–present): Lin calls this her "final memorial." It's a project that uses sound, media, science, and art to raise awareness about the loss of biodiversity and natural habitats. It exists in many forms and places, not just one spot.
- Neilson Library (2015-2021): Lin worked on redesigning this library and its grounds at Smith College.
- Ghost Forest (2021): A project in Madison Square Park, New York, featuring dead trees to highlight climate change.
Maya Lin's concern for nature and the environment is central to her art and architecture. She has said, "I think nature is resilient— if we protect it."
How Maya Lin Designs
Maya Lin describes herself as a "designer" rather than just an "architect." She always thinks about how a space will be in the future and how it connects with nature and people. She focuses on the feelings a space creates and what it means to those who use it. She believes that art should be a way for someone to say something new and unique.
Lin says her work "originates from a simple desire to make people aware of their surroundings, not just the physical world but also the psychological world we live in." Her creative process involves a lot of thinking and talking about her ideas first. She tries to understand the meaning of a project before she even visits the site. After she fully understands the idea, she makes many models of her design.
In her historical memorials, like the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Civil Rights Memorial, Lin often focuses on the timeline of what she is remembering. This idea is also seen in her art about the changing environment and the shrinking of water bodies. Lin also likes to combine different materials and ideas that seem opposite. She says, "I feel I exist on the boundaries. Somewhere between science and art, art and architecture, public and private, east and west.... I am always trying to find a balance between these opposing forces."
Personal Life
Maya Lin was married to Daniel Wolf (1955–2021), who was a photography dealer. She has homes in New York and Colorado. She is a mother to two daughters, India and Rachel. Her older brother is the poet Tan Lin.
Awards and Recognition
Maya Lin has received many honors and awards for her work. She has been given honorary degrees from universities like Yale, Harvard, and the University of Pennsylvania. In 1987, Yale University gave her an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts, making her one of the youngest people to receive such an award.
In 1994, a documentary film about her, Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision, won an Academy Award. The film's title comes from a speech she gave where she talked about her design process.
In 2002, Lin was chosen to be an Alumni Fellow of the Yale Corporation, which is the governing body of Yale University. Another one of her designs, The Women's Table, is on the Yale campus.
In 2003, Maya Lin was part of the jury that selected the design for the World Trade Center Site Memorial Competition.
In 2005, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York.
President Barack Obama gave Lin the National Medal of Arts in 2009 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016.
In 2022, the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., opened the first exhibition dedicated to Maya Lin. It highlighted her work as an architect, sculptor, environmentalist, and designer of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
Selected Awards and Honors
- 1999: Rome Prize
- 2000: Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement
- 2003: Finn Juhl Prize
- 2005: Elected to The American Academy of Arts and Letters
- 2005: Elected to National Women's Hall of Fame
- 2007: AIA Twenty-five Year Award
- 2009: National Medal of Arts
- 2011: Thomas Jefferson Medal in Architecture
- 2014: The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize
- 2016: Presidential Medal of Freedom
Images for kids
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2 × 4 Landscape (2006) at the De Young Museum in San Francisco in January 2009
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Lin's The Women's Table in front of the Sterling Memorial Library, commemorating the role of women at Yale University
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Lin's winning submission for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial design competition
See also
In Spanish: Maya Lin para niños
