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| SELECTED WORKS OF MAYA LIN A
chronological, illustrated catalog of Maya Lin's most significant
works
Aligning Reeds (1985), New Haven, Connecticut Civil Rights Memorial (1988-89), Montgomery, Alabama Open-Air
Peace Chapel (1988-89), Juniata College Topo
(1989-91), Charlotte Sports Coliseum Eclipsed
Time (1989-95), Pennsylvania Station Women's
Table (1990-93), Yale University Weber House (1991-93), Williamstown, Massachusetts Groundswell
(1992-93), Wexner Center for the Arts Museum for African Art (1992-93), New York, New York Wave
Field (1993-95), FXB Aerospace Engineering Building 10
Degrees North (1993-96), Rockefeller Foundation Headquarters A
Shift in the Stream (1995-97), Principal Financial Group
Headquarters Reading
a Garden (1996-98), Cleveland Public Library Private Duplex Apartment, New York City (1996-98), New York. Topographic Landscape (1997) (Portable sculpture) Phases of the Moon (1998) (Portable sculpture) Avalanche (1998) (Portable sculpture) Langston Hughes Library (1999), Clinton, Tennessee Timetable (2000), Stanford University, Stanford, California the character of a hill, under glass (2000-01), American Express Client Services Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota Ecliptic
(2001), Grand Rapids, Michigan . Vietnam Veterans Memorial (VVM) (1980-82) Constitution Gardens, National Mall, Washington, D.C. Cooper-Lecky Partnership, architect of record; Henry Arnold, landscape architect. 
One of the
most controversial works of public art of recent times. Maya Lin's
design was the unanimous choice of the jury of prominent art and
design specialists who judged the VVM competition on behalf of the
Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund (VVMF). But a few veterans, encouraged
by conservative politicians, objected to the design's color, siting,
and non-representational character. In order to get the Memorial
approved for construction, the VVMF was consequently forced to accept
the addition of two other elements on the site--a group sculpture
by Frederick Hart of three seven-foot bronze figures of Vietnam-era
U.S. soldiers, titled Three Fighting Men, and an American flag on
a 60-foot pole. The overwhelming acceptance and respect by rank-and-file
Vietnam veterans for the Lin Memorial, once it was built, effectively
ended the controversy. An initial,
subtle foray into environmental art, created by Lin while she was
a Yale graduate student. She placed some aluminum rods among reeds
at the bend of a stream. From a distance the rods blend in with
the reeds, but from a certain vantage point, the artificial nature
of the rods suddenly appears, and it is obvious they are an artist-created
intercession in the natural environment. Lin's brilliant
solution to the problem of engaging the spectator in the course
of civil rights events engraved on the monument was the invention
of a circular "table," covered in a film of water. Two related
stone circles on a rural hilltop site: one in the open, with a 40-foot
diameter of rough-cut stone, designed as a place for group activity;
the other, a few hundred feet away in a secluded wood, made of a
single flat stone with a four-foot diameter and meant for solitary
meditation. Earthworks
and topiary transform the median of the 1600-foot approach to the
Coliseum into the site for an imaginary giant-sized game. A ceiling clock
whose face gradually darkens between noon and midnight, and then
slowly brightens again in the morning hours. Granite water
table honors the women of Yale with a spiral, engraved timeline
that records the number of women in Yale programs from the founding
of the University in the early 18th century through 1993. Lin's first
residential commission was influenced by her interest in Japanese
house design. "The plan is centered around a rock garden, with
low, controlled views out to the gardens as well as to the surrounding
mountains....I did not see the house as a space divided into separate
rooms but as a series of free-flowing spaces that seamlessly connect
one to the next...." (Lin, Maya Ying, Boundaries, New York,
Simon & Schuster, 2000, p.10:07) Wave forms
sculpted from recycled safety glass fill certain unused but visible
interior spaces in Peter Eisenman's Wexner Center. Created during
Lin's year as visual artist-in-residence at the Center. "Maya
Lin's project for the new home of the [museum] involved the interior
remodeling of two floors in an old loft building. The design of
the spaces of the museum took the form of a path, an educational
passage, in which the viewer is immersed in a journey of light and
dark, night and day. Lin wanted to create an empathic environment
free from rigid geometric order. The result was a fluid movement
through the building, with its own sense of rhythms and modulations."
(Rogers, Sarah J., Maya Lin: Public/Private, Columbus, Ohio, Wexner
Center for the Arts, Ohio State University, 1994, p.35) The idea for
this piece, in which a tract of land next to the Building was sculpted
into forms reminiscent of water waves, was suggested to Lin from
the illustrations in a book on fluid mechanics lent to her by one
of the Michigan engineering professors. Interior environmental
installation of bamboo walls, rough-hewn wooden benches, and stone
tables, centered by a square water table with a relief map of the
world carved into the stone. The title of the piece refers to the
geographical location from which the projections controlling the
size of the map's land masses were made--10 degrees north of the
equator, rather than at the equator, as is the normal practice.
Lin feels that projections taken at the equator are seriously distortive
because they make Asia and North America look much larger than they
really are. An interior
installation that makes no attempt to coexist comfortably with its
surroundings, as Lin's pieces usually do. Introduces trickles of
water down the two-story-high glass walls of the building's lobby.
The water is then collected at the bottom and routed along the lobby
wall through a trough behind a long, jagged opening, like a running
crack. An interactive
outdoor garden space containing a melding of Maya Lin's sculptural
environment with the abstract poetry of Tan Lin, her brother. "In the
design of a private residence in Manhattan, the space needed to
be flexible. It had to feel intimate and comfortable for one person,
yet had to 'expand' to accommodate his entire family on those occasions
when they were all in town....I began to think of how domestic architecture
has evolved from a very traditional idea of family, work, and home.
The way we live today is very different from the way we lived a
hundred years ago. I wanted to create a living space that was responsive
to our changed way of living....I envisioned a home that could fold
in on itself, like origami or a transformer toy, changing its shape
or function depending upon how it was used. I saw it as a quiet
retreat from the city, where light would filter through the entire
apartment via translucent walls." (Lin, Maya Ying, Boundaries,
New York, Simon & Schuster, 2000, p.10:16)
A selection
of Lin's "studio sculptures"--portable pieces that have
circulated in recent exhibitions. The Children's
Defense Fund now owns the former Alex Haley Farm and uses it as
a headquarters and conference center. Lin was commissioned to remodel
a barn on the property to accommodate a 5000-volume reference library
on civil rights and children's advocacy and a small book store. Lin's Stanford
sculpture, located in the plaza in front of the Packard Electrical
Engineering Building, is another of her works in the "water
table" series. This one contains a complex clock in its 16-ton
granite table that keeps track of time in several zones. The piece
was commissioned for Stanford by Helen Bing. "The garden
is inside a three-story glass box in the front of the lobby, visible
from the street. Lin turned part of the exterior wall into a waterfall,
which freezes in the winter, changing the view out from the lobby
and the view in from the street. There are trees, and stone benches,
which are echoed in the landscaping that Lin has designed outside
the building. The distinctive feature of Lin's garden is the floor,
which has been warped so that it has the contours of a hill (or
a burial mound). The floorboards are the same as you would find
in a bowling alley--that is, they read as level--but they have been
curved to create rises and dips." (Menand, Louis, "Profiles:
the Reluctant Memorialist," The New Yorker, v.78, no.18 (July
8, 2002), p.65) A 3.5-acre
park in a section of downtown Grand Rapids that the city government
hopes to revitalize.
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