Maya Ying Lin
Born 1959
2015 Portrait of a Nation Prize Recipient
As a student at Yale University, Maya Lin (born 1959) redefined the conventional notion of a heroic war monument with her understated and controversial design for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Her work has continued to gain international attention, including large-scale installations such as Storm King Wavefield and what she describes as her "last memorial," an environmentalist multimedia project titled What Is Missing.
Karin Sander's diminutive 3-D scanned portrait reflects the architect's sense of herself as a small part of a global environment. Like so many of Lin's own designs, the unconventionality of this portrait invites the viewer to look more closely and see the sitter in a new way.
Credit: National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; acquired through the generosity of the Academy of Achievement/Wayne and Catherine Reynolds; 2015 Portrait of a Nation Prize Recipient
2014
3D color scan of the living person, polychrome 3D inkjetprint, plaster material, color, pigment ink, scale 1:5
33.0 x 8.3 x 5.7 cm
NPG.2015.15
Image and text © National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, 2024
Permanent collection
Maya Lin
0:53