Maya Lin
Maya Lin is an artist, designer and environmentalist who interprets the natural world through science, history, politics, and culture. From her very first work, The Vietnam Veterans Memorial, which she designed as a 21-year-old undergraduate at Yale University Ms. Lin has gone on to a simply remarkable career- in Art and in Architecture while still being committed to works that have dealt with memory and history and some of the critical cultural issues of our time.
In a recent article in the New York Times, it was said that “Ms. Lin has gone on to be one of the most cerebral and fascinating of today’s generation of American architects. The architecture critic Martin Filler said of her work: Her meditative view of the building art provides a means for expressing poetic impulses about humanity’s place in the natural, rather than man-made, environment.”
Lin’s architectural works include a Chapel and Library for the Children’s Defense Fund and the master plan and primary building in Novartis’ Cambridge, Massachusetts complex, which The Boston Globe’s Robert Campbell described as “A work of Art" that is “ambitious in its scope and brilliantly designed”. Currently, Lin is working on the new Neilson Library at Smith College, a major outdoor art installation at Princeton University, and What is Missing?, a multi-sited memorial dedicated to raising awareness about species loss and climate change.
She is represented by the Pace Gallery in New York. Her architectural works create a close dialogue between the landscape and built environment, and all are committed to sustainable design solutions.
In 2009, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts, the nation’s highest honor for artistic excellence. In 2016, President Barack Obama awarded Lin the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, praising her for a celebrated career in both art and architecture, and for creating a sacred place of healing in our nation’s capital.
