Maya Lin, (born Oct. 5, 1959, Athens, Ohio, U.S.), U.S. architect and sculptor. The daughter of Chinese immigrants, she achieved fame in 1981 when, as a senior at Yale University, she created a design that won the nationwide Vietnam Veterans Memorial competition. It consisted of a polished black granite V-shaped wall inscribed with the names of the approximately 58,000 men and women who were killed or missing in action; its minimalist style aroused controversy at the time, though the memorial proved immediately popular after its dedication in 1982. Her subsequent, vastly different designs include the major commissions for the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Ala. (1989), The Women’s Table at Yale (1993), an earth sculpture for the University of Michigan (1994), and a translucent clock, Eclipsed Time, in the ceiling of New York City’s Pennsylvania Station (installed 1994, deinstalled 2019). She also created architectural designs for the Museum of Chinese in America (2009) in New York City and the Neilson Library (2021) at Smith College in Massachusetts. Lin’s Ghost Trees, a temporary grove of dead Atlantic white cedars that she planted in 2021 in New York City, sought to draw attention to climate change. Lin was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 2009 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016.
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