True Art Transcends. . .
When Maya Lin, then 21, was chosen as the winning artist to design the Viet Nam War Memorial in 1981, many were in an uproar. How could such a young person, and a Chinese one at that, create a memorial fitting for American service men and women?
Luckily for her and for us, submissions for the design competition were sent in "blind" with numbers instead of names. Lin herself felt that her design would never have been chosen if the judges knew her ethnicity.
Today, the starkly simple, yet dramatic V-shaped memorial with its 58 thousand plus names etched in its black, stone-cut masonry wall, draws thousands of visitors each year, and praise (even if belatedly) for its power to evoke deep emotions in the hundreds of thousands—those who lost loved ones, and those who feel the deep pain on America’s most unpopular war.
Now 51, Lin went on to achieve even more accolades. Among them: the artist and architect for the Confluence Project in 2000, a series of out door installations along the Columbia and Snake River, in Washington State and served on the selection jury for the World Trade Center Memorial in 2003.
In 2005, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 2009, she was awarded the National Medal of Art by President Barack Obama.
True art is transcendent; it knows neither age or gender, cares little for race or ethnicity, or even time and space. And if we allow ourselves to ^^^^^^^
