Maya Lin 1:5

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