Maya Lin announced herself to the nation in 1981 by winning a contest to design the Vietnam War Memorial. She was still a 21-year-old senior at Yale, but her work ignited one of the country’s most bitter disputes over a public monument. Lin intended the design—a stark, V-shaped slash of polished black granite inscribed with nearly 58,000 names of Americans who died in the war—to resemble “a wound in the earth that is slowly healing.” Her minimalist, nontraditional approach left many angry, confused or both. Moreover, some were upset that the nation’s memorial to its war in southeast Asia was created by an Asian American.
Time has sided with Lin. Each year some four million people flock to the site—reputedly the most visited memorial in the country—to see their faces reflected in the surface as they leave commemorative gifts or make paper rubbings of a loved one’s name. Since her initial triumph, Lin has created other major memorials, such as the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Ala., and public and corporate art installations. She has also lent her gifts to the museum world, creating art for exhibitions and designing buildings such as New York’s Museum for African Art and Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA), slated to open this fall in Chinatown. Museum senior editor Leah Arroyo visited Lin in her Soho studio to discuss museums, memory, identity and finding your way home.
MUSEUM: IT’S BEEN REPORTED THAT THE REDESIGN OF THE MUSEUM OF CHINESE IN AMERICA IS THE FIRST CHINESE-RELATED PROJECT YOU’VE WORKED ON.
Maya Lin: That’s actually not quite true—I worked with one of the founders of MOCA, Jack Tchen, when I designed the Asian/Pacific/American [APA] center for New York University in 1998, which I think has since been turned into the journalism school, much to everybody’s—including mine and Jack’s—annoyance. But we won’t go there. APA was the first time I designed a work of architecture for an Asian Pacific [project]. But it was all-inclusive, not specifically Chinese American.
SO IS MOCA A PROJECT YOU COULDN’T HAVE DONE 10 OR 15 YEARS AGO?
Maybe 10 years ago, but certainly not 20 years ago. I basically didn’t even realize I was Chinese. I was a kid from Ohio. I’ll never forget it: Somebody asked me, “Well, do you think it’s ironic that you’re of Asian descent and you just did the Vietnam Memorial?” and I looked this guy in the eye and I said, “It’s completely irrelevant.” I didn’t even realize there would be prejudice against me. I was that naive, because I grew up in academia. It’s not what you look like; it’s not the color of your hair. It took me 20 years to realize how people perceive you, but also, because I grew up surrounded by white people, I didn’t realize I was Chinese, believe it or not. Duh. A lot of critics would say, “Oh, there’s so much Zen in her work,” and I’d be saying, “You’re just reading into it—that’s you, not me.” And it’s safer. In my 30s, mid-30s, maybe it was after I had kids—you begin to really want to go back and understand the cultural underpinnings of what makes you.
YOU’VE SAID THAT THE MUSEUM’S DESIGN IS “NOT SPECIFICALLY TRYING TO ATTACH ITSELF TO WHAT YOU COULD CALL AN “ASIAN AESTHETIC.” WHAT DID YOU MEAN?
I think there are stereotypes of what Zen is and what Asian is, and what does that mean? You can go into any Chinese restaurant downtown, it’s one look; you can go into some of these Asian fusion places, and there’s a certain style. You want to be careful not to fall into any stereotypes. The old stereotype would be red lacquer. Red is not a part of our palette, so we’ve introduced our own palette.
As an architect or as an artist, my aesthetic voice—there’s a simplicity that I’ve always loved. One could say that I’m influenced by my cultural heritage, but at the same time, I’m born here, I’m American, and I think it gets down to the roots of what this museum is about: identity issues. Having been born in the United States, I’m as American as any other American is. What does your cultural background, your parents’ cultural background, bring to how you will then see the world? A lot of what’s going on inside the museum is asking those questions of identity. My work tends to introduce all-natural materials, very much a remove from the busy-ness of life. There’s a quieting down. It’s almost—I don’t want to say meditative, because a lot of people have said that, and I don’t know if they’re projecting, “She’s Asian; she makes meditative spaces.” But at the same time I am very drawn to creating a sense of calm. A moment of stillness. And maybe that is slightly a more Asian aesthetic, whatever that means.
SO WHAT PRODUCES A SENSE OF IDENTITY?
I would hope that the content of what the museum is talking about is, “What does it mean to be Chinese American?” I know that they’ve asked in the past, “Where is home?” Obviously, for me home is Athens, Ohio, in America, but at the same time, in my 20s and 30s I realized how much my aesthetic is influenced by my parents’ aesthetics. And how much were they influenced by the fact that they were born and raised in Shanghai and Beijing? I’m looking at one of my father’s pots right behind us; my mother was a poet. Though they never sat us down and taught us about Taoism, when I finally did pick up a book on Taoism and Confucianism—which was much, much later in life, because I was absolutely reticent in wanting to intellectualize what my cultural background might be—I was stunned because it made me realize that certain things had come through in my work.
How much do your kids pick up on fundamentals? Do we tell you what to think, are we didactic in our teaching, or do we give you a well of water and you drink from that well, and what you came out with is . . . I’m not going to tell you exactly what conclusion you should come to. That would be horrible to me. I have no right to do that, but I can absolutely present you with the facts and let you come away with them. Some would say that that is a fairly Asian or Eastern way of being. One could argue that the Eastern way of thinking is seeking. It’s asking you to seek. At times it’s asking you to seek within yourself. But I’ve deliberately not wanted to read up a lot about this because I don’t believe for me it’s an intellectualized process.
IN DESIGNING A MUSEUM, WHERE DO YOU START—WITH THE COLLECTIONS, A VISION OF THE BUILDING, THE MISSION?
The mission, I think, with MOCA, which is making a very large move from being a very small institution—in the new space of 14,000 square feet, the old MOCA could fit into one tiny room. What we discussed at the start with the curators, with the director, with the board: What is the changing mission of MOCA? You not only have a building that is changing, you’ve got an institution that is growing equally. It originated as a grassroots, community-based organization saving the history of New York’s Chinatown. Its dream now is that it’s going to become a national museum of Chinese American history. What does that mean? These are the questions I’ve been thinking about—not just as the designer or the architect; I’m also on their board now. I’ve become more vested; at times I can’t separate my job as the architect from my dedication to them as a trustee.
SO WHAT DESIGN EMERGED?
We were kind of blessed with two buildings that have been combined with a sky-lit courtyard at the heart of it, and we’re leaving that very raw and old. The permanent exhibition revolves around this courtyard. On the six windows looking into the courtyard, three portraits will be projected in each window, and as you walk by, you see the changing face of Chinese American immigrants to this country. You start with 1850s, pre-Gold Rush; you go to the Gold Rush era; you go to the ’30s and ’40s; and if you walk up to each window you’ll hear the story, the monologue of what this person’s life was. It might end with a portrait of a Chinese girl who’s been adopted. We have come to this country in separate waves—each wave is from a different part of China, coming to a different part of America, and it’s still going on. We’re in, I think, the sixth wave of immigration; it’s the business interests going back and forth from China to the U.S., as well as this newest group.
One of the outreach programs at MOCA will be to talk to some of the parents who have adopted Chinese children and invite them in. “What is your story? Tell us your story, and we’ll add that to the online museum as well.” As you enter the building, I’ve created something called a Journey Wall, which is a bronzed tiled wall. It’s for people who can’t give a lot of money but want to be a part of the journey. You will be able to put your family name in, where you came from in China, where you ended up in the United States. I’m from Ohio, and every time people say “Where are you from?” and I say “Ohio,” they look at me like [She puts her index fingers on the outer corners of her eyelids and pulls outward], “You, Ohio?” Because they want to put you in either San Francisco or New York; that inherently is a stereotype. So this Journey Wall will not work unless I get a true authentic demographic with people from Iowa, Wisconsin, Minneapolis, Georgia. I think if you can tweak what people assume, they’ll look at you for the first time. They’ll pay attention. They’ll go, “Iowa? Georgia? What is going on here?”
AND THE MUSEUM IS EXPANDING ITS WEBSITE TO COMPLEMENT THE REOPENING.
I think the key is, the online museum won’t just try to say, “Here’s what the permanent museum is doing.” Say you’re someone in Hawaii or someone in Iowa and you can’t come here. It will engage you in the virtual world as well. That is the opportunity, I think, to really open up the doors to what it means to be a national museum. Outreach is so much a part of it. Right now we’re really beginning to think about what the online museum can be, how it segues and interfaces with the physical museum.
There’ll be an online Journey Wall, which I’m seeing as a work of art. I’m going to animate it with Flash so that you can enter your stories. Growing up in Ohio, maybe I felt a little isolated, didn’t realize why, felt different, didn’t realize why. My brother and I were the only Chinese Americans in Athens, Ohio, and maybe it would be nice to be able to go online and share your story and know that there are other kids just like you, feeling maybe a little out of place.
Oddly enough, it’s an art piece, but it’s also like some of the memory works I’ve done. I’ve been drawn to works at times—the Vietnam Memorial; the Civil Rights Memorial; The Women’s Table; the Confluence Project, which is happening throughout the Pacific Northwest and deals with Native American issues; and then finally Missing [an installation at the California Academy of Sciences], which will deal with environmental issues. I’m very interested in history and in using history to teach us so that maybe we learn from our history. Maybe that’s because my parents are both educators. I’ve actually stopped calling them memorials, because I think memorials deal much more with an assumption of death. I call them memory works because they always incorporate history—how relevant history is to today. It allows you to reflect, and obviously it’s about the future. How does the past teach us and guide us to a different future?
TELL ME MORE ABOUT MISSING, YOUR LATEST MEMORY WORK.
Missing is not about the dodo bird; it’s about the things that are literally disappearing before our eyes that you’re not even thinking of. So I go from the dodo bird very quickly to scale, size of species, the abundance of species, to one of the facts I’ve come across: The top 20 songbirds in this country have diminished between 50 percent to 80 percent in numbers [in the last 40 years]. The sound of songbirds in our backyards when we were children, the landscape of sound, has significantly changed, and we weren’t aware of it. Now, if I can get you to be aware of it, of something that you didn’t even think of as missing, maybe you’re going to care enough to wake up. And then it ends with all the things we can do, both to help groups that are doing the scientific expert work but also concerning what our consumer practices are doing to these habitats. I’m linking our everyday activities to wildlife.
DID THE ACADEMY SUGGEST THE PROJECT TO YOU?
The California Academy of Sciences commissioned me to create a work of art, and I’m doing a wire landscape sculpture. But at the same time I have wanted to end the memorial series; the fifth and last one will be Missing. It will not just exist at the California Academy of Sciences—imagine a monument that can jump form. It’ll be a book, a website, and it will touch down at a couple of institutions, of which the California Academy will be the first. Everyone thinks a monument is singular and static, so I’m going to get you to rethink what a monument can be. What if it is transmutable and can jump from a book site to a website to a physical place, to a table at the California Academy out-of-doors? You walk up to it, and it’s interactive, and it’ll teach you about things that are disappearing, things that we need to help.
WHERE ELSE WILL IT BE GOING?
I’m talking with groups right now. I won’t put on too many permanent ones, but imagine—it might not be physical; it might be a projection screen. Can I dematerialize a monument completely and have it become pure content? Because what are these pieces about? They are about information. And teaching us. And sharing facts. And then, yes, you’re going to draw certain conclusions from them.
WHAT DO MUSEUMS OFFER THAT OTHER PUBLIC SPACES DON’T?
They live in the world of not-for-profits. Their mission is to educate; it’s to change the way people think—for the better, one would hope. Like schools, like libraries, museums are in that wonderful world where it’s all about giving back to society. Their whole duty is to raise awareness, to teach us something we don’t know, which is so different from a private corporation or anyone who has a motivation that is about themselves. The museum is about the person who’s walking in the door.
ENVIRONMENTALISM IS AN IMPORTANT CAUSE FOR YOU. HOW HAS IT SHAPED YOUR WORK?
Both in my art and architecture work, I’ve been very committed to green design. All my works ask you to look at the land differently. Perhaps if I can get you to see it differently, you’ll pay closer attention to it. So, using science and technology, sonar resonancing, NASA satellite views of the earth, I make art that is very much letting you look at the world through the lens of technology. Is it any different from landscape painters of the 18th century? They were presenting a view of the world, and their means were just their eyes looking out. We can look at the world through a microscope, through a satellite, through a telescope. So I’ve just got a lot more technological tools at my disposal to be able to take a look at the land differently.
One of the other things about MOCA is—I’ll get a funder to help—I want it LEED [Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design] rated. They’re committed to it, to environmental issues. My stuff gets at least silver or gold, depending upon how much money the institution has. I think it is incredibly important to send the right message to people. Especially right now, America and China, we’re the biggest per-capita users of energy, and our consumption is crazy. China, though, has overtaken the world in global emissions. We both have to change. And so I’m doing whatever I can to say, “Hey, we can all be building green, and it’s incredibly important, and it will save you money and it’s really great for the environment.” Everywhere I go, I’ve been incorporating recycled materials, maximizing daylight, reducing energy usage and light for years and years. It’s my one big cause.
WHAT PERSUADES YOU TO TAKE ON A PARTICULAR ARCHITECTURAL PROJECT? I NOTICED, FOR EXAMPLE, THAT YOU DON’T EVEN HAVE A WEBSITE. BUT THEN, YOU DON’T EXACTLY NEED TO ADVERTISE.
You know what—I’m about to put up a website, but the reason I’ve held off is, actually, I don’t want any more [work]. I’m so busy. My clients have been very patient. I didn’t want to be a big firm [the studio has five staff members]. It gets back down to the environment, for me. Nothing in nature grows exponentially forever. My attitude is, well, you can have a 100-man office, and that’s great, and there are a lot of people out there that want to live that way. I don’t know; I just would rather have three projects that I’m making myself. The hardest thing in my life has been to stay small, because our tendency in this world is to get bigger and bigger. Because I split my time between art and architecture, if I had a [large] firm, I wouldn’t be able to do the art.
So when do I take on a project? Some of it is happenstance—a friend knows a friend and it works out perfect, timing-wise. And other times, the timing isn’t right and I’m too busy with the architecture or the art. At times you think, well, you can’t really practice your art of architecture because sometimes the budgets are so small you’re lucky to get to change the front door. But at the same time, I’ve always said yes to one not-for-profit at a time; that could very well be my parents and the way they brought me up. They were both academics, so maybe there’s a reverse snobbery with academia. All I know is that I can’t say no to certain things, but I can’t take on more than one at any given time, because you do devote a lot with a very small staff to it, and you have to be a little careful. My attitude is, design shouldn’t just be for the very wealthy. I love helping out a not-for-profit that doesn’t have the means. We can’t just relegate design to the highest budgets. I usually do the not-for-profits on a shoestring, so this one [MOCA] I’ve gotten a little carried away with.
Other than that, I’ll take on architectural projects that are of real interest to me. I’m pretty fortunate; I can basically say yes only to what I want to do. I think the difference in the making of art and the making of architecture is that we draw architecture up and somebody else executes it. For my large-scale works, I’m not on the bulldozer, but I’ve made maquette [model] after maquette, groomed it and groomed it. Whereas you don’t make a blueprint for a drawing; you just start drawing. I just start sculpting in the back [of the studio], and it’s vital to keeping me grounded, you know? In order to do “Systematic Landscapes”—it’s been eight years since my last show—I basically didn’t take on any architectural commissions for three years. Except for MOCA, which I had to. It’s like, here, I’ll run your benefit and I’ll join your board and I’ll help you fundraise, because I just believe in it.
YOU’VE BEEN CALLED BOTH A DESIGNER AND AN ARCHITECT, IN ADDITION TO BEING AN ARTIST. HOW IS THE TERM “DESIGNER” DIFFERENT FROM “ARCHITECT”?
ML: I’m not licensed as an architect, so I technically cannot label myself as an architect, although I would say that we pretty much produce with architects of record supervising. I love architecture and I love building architecture, but technically, legally, I’m not licensed, so I’m a designer. I wouldn’t say I’m relegated to interior design, though. When I take it on, I pretty much take it on.
The interesting thing is, I get to make architecture sometimes and put art in architecture, and other times I’m
acting strictly as an artist and I get to install works in other people’s buildings. It’s fun to be working on a museum on one hand and then run out to San Diego to help install “Systematic Landscapes.”
WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU OFFER A 21-YEAR-OLD MAYA LIN?
It’s hard to say, because in a funny way I think the biggest potential pitfall for me was that people were always asking for stuff, and I wasn’t ready and I was awed. I’m slow—again, I’ve taken eight years since my last show—and I think it confused a lot of people who wanted more. I think I could have done it, but I don’t think the work would have matured the way it has. I think that was the biggest pitfall, and I think I’ve sidestepped it.
This article was published in Museum, July/August 2008.
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