Maya Lin on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial November 11, 2008

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Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2008/10/24/Maya_Lin_on_Universal_Loss_and_Vietnam_Veterans_Memorial

Artist Maya Lin discusses the meaning behind her once-controversial design for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.

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Maya Lin: Systematic Landscapes is a major exhibition of new sculptures, drawings, and installations by renowned artist Maya Lin.

In 1981, Lin's Vietnam Veterans Memorial dramatically changed the language and form of commemorative sculpture by infusing minimalist design with the emotional charge of memory.

Her subsequent work, whether monument, sculpture, design object, or building is equally characterized by its harmony of message and material. In recent years, Lin has focused on a reconsideration of landscape in a time of ecological tension and change.

This new body of work engages the issue of our fragile connection to the environment in timely and poetic ways - De Young Museum

Born in 1959 in Athens, Ohio, Maya Lin catapulted into the public eye when, as a senior at Yale University, she submitted the winning design in a national competition for a Vietnam Veterans Memorial to be built in Washington, D.C. She was trained as an artist and architect, and her sculptures, parks, monuments, and architectural projects are linked by her ideal of making a place for individuals within the landscape. Lin, a Chinese-American, came from a cultivated and artistic home. Her father was the dean of fine arts at Ohio University; her mother is a professor of literature at Ohio University. She draws inspiration for her sculpture and architecture from culturally diverse sources, including Japanese gardens, Hopewell Indian earthen mounds, and works by American earthworks artists of the 1960s and 1970s. Her most recognizable work, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, allows the names of those lost in combat to speak for themselves. Lin lives in New York and Colorado.