"One of the rare few who have managed to forge a path in both art and architecture, Maya Lin is at once a sculptor, architect, designer, craftsman and thinker.” - Michael Brenson, Art Critic

A contemporary Chinese-American artist/architect, Maya Lin has created public works that have touched people in a way unprecedented in contemporary art and architecture. Trained as an architect, her sculptures, environmental artworks, memorials and architectural projects create places of refuge and contemplation in highly public places.

Maya Lin has redefined the idea of a monument, addressing the critical social and political issues of our time – war, racism and gender equality – with her highly acclaimed works. In addition to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC (1982), Lin created the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, AL (1989) and the Women’s Table at Yale University (1993).

Throughout her body of work is a profound respect and love for the natural environment. Her art finds inspiration from natural sources as diverse as rock formations, ice floes, water patterns, solar eclipses and aerial views of the earth. Lin recently completed a 3.5 acre park in downtown Grand Rapids base on the theme of water in its three physical state: solid, liquid and vapor.

Lin, a Chinese-American, came from a cultivated and artistic home. Her father was the Dean of Fine Arts and her mother was a professor of literature both at Ohio University. “As the child of immigrants you have that sense of ‘Where are you? Where’s home?’…and of trying to make a home,” remarks Lin. Her first public work, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, allows the names of those lost in combat to speak for themselves, connecting a tragedy that happened on foreign soil with the soil of America’s capital city, where it stands.

Her award-winning architectural projects include the Langston Hughes Library for the Children’s Defense Fund (Clinton, TN, 1999), a private residence in New York City based on a Chinese puzzle box (1999), and the Museum for African Art, also in New York (1993). She is currently designing a Chapel for the Children’s Defense Fund and several private houses.

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