Maya Lin  (American, 1959) 

Maya Lin (American, b.1959) is a sculptor and architect best known for her large-scale environmental installations. While she was still an undergraduate student at Yale University, Lin was selected by the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial Fund to design a monument in Washington, D.C. As a partially buried granite wall inscribed with the names of those who died or went missing, her Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial(1981) caused some controversy by diverging from the form of the traditional public monument. Her other work explores the connection between architecture and natural landscape: Where the Land Meets the Sea(2008) traces the topography of San Francisco with stainless steel tubing, and Storm King Wavefield (2009) molds 11 acres of land into parallel rows of peaks and valleys. Her work draws from the designs of Japanese gardens and Hopewell Indian earth mounds, as well as earthwork artists of the 1960s and 1970s. She has received awards such as the Presidential Design Award and AIA Honor Award, and holds honorary doctorates from Yale and Harvard Universities. The exhibition Maya Lin: Systematic Landscapes (2009) at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. is the first to bring Lin’s architectural work inside the gallery space. She is currently represented by PaceWildenstein Gallery in New York, where she has worked since 1986.