Maya Lin Biography

Maya Lin is the world-renowned architect of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, and one of the most important public artists of this century. Her parents fled China just before the Communist takeover in 1949, eventually settling in Athens, Ohio, where both became professors at Ohio University. Her mother wrote poetry and taught literature; her father, a ceramic artist, became the Dean of Fine Arts.

As a 21-year-old architecture student at Yale, Lin designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial as a class project, then entered it in the largest design competition in American history. Her striking proposal, a V-shaped wall of black stone, etched with the names of 58,000 dead soldiers, beat out the submissions of 1,420 other entrants. She encountered ferocious criticism when her unconventional design was selected. Feelings were running so high that her name was not even mentioned at the dedication of the memorial in 1982. She coped with the painful controversy by returning to Yale as a graduate student. Her inspiring vision has since become the most-visited memorial in the nation's capital. The families of the fallen leave mementos at the wall, and veterans maintain a constant vigil there.

Since leaving Yale, Lin has created a dozen other major works across the nation, including the Peace Chapel at Pennsylvania's Juniata College, the "Women's Table," at Yale University and the Langston Hughes Library in Clinton, Tennessee. Her Civil Rights memorial in Montgomery, Alabama displays inscriptions on a disc of black stone beneath a thin layer of moving water. "The Wave Field," at the University of Michigan College of Engineering, is a pure earth sculpture, made entirely of soil covered with grass, undulating in waves six feet high. Maya Lin has also executed architectural projects for the Rockefeller Foundation and the new Federal Courthouse in Manhattan. Her life and work were detailed in the Academy Award-winning documentary film of 1995, Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision.

As both artist and architect, her work reflects a strong interest in the environment, a commitment she has also served as an advisor on sustainable energy use, and as a Board Member of the National Resources Defense Council. In 2000 she published her first book, Boundaries. She describes it as a "visual and verbal sketchbook, where image can bee seen as text and text is sometimes used as image."