Maya Lin

Maya Lin first received international recognition in 1981 when, as an undergraduate architecture student, she won the design competition for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. Setting up her studio practice in New York City in 1987, she has maintained a careful balance in her career between art and architecture, creating a remarkable body of work that includes large-scale, site-specific installations, intimate studio artworks, and architectural works. A committed environmentalist, Lin consistently promotes sustainable building design in her architectural practice, while in her art she asks us to pay closer attention to the natural world.

Both of Lin's parents were educators at Ohio University; her father was a ceramicist and the dean of fine arts and her mother, a poet and professor of literature. She earned a BA in architecture in 1981 and an MA in architecture in 1986, both from Yale University. A film about her work, Maya Lin, a strong Clear vision, won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Film in 1995.