Maya Lin’s Courage in Stone

Maya Lin was a Yale senior in 1981 when she won the Vietnam Veterans Memorial national design competition. She curated a simple design with a reflective granite surface, listing the names of the dead or missing veterans. The Vietnam War had no clear victory and clean ending, so Lin intentionally wanted the design to be less about triumph and more about mourning the veterans America lost. 

After her design was chosen, many tensions sparked. Some stated that the design was not nationalistic enough, calling it a “nihilistic slab of stone.” Additionally, other critics were blatantly racist, stating how it did not make sense that a woman of Asian descent would memorialize the Vietnam War. Many were skeptical of her age, especially since she had not yet received her degree in architecture from Yale. 

However, as time passed, the design reconciled differences and shaped modern post-war design. She reshaped how America sees memorials and art: they can be used as a mechanism to unite people with differing beliefs. 

 Lin’s Yale professor Vincent J. Scully shared what qualities he believed Lin possessed, asking others to “imagine the courage it took to stand up those people during the investigation. The fiber. The word for Maya is courage. It really is.” Lin overcame vocal opposition to her design, which often targeted her ethnicity, gender, and age. She taught others to honor their instincts, develop methods to pursue curiosity, and maintain total focus to reach excellence. Lin believed that art’s primary purpose was to blur divides and create fluidity in the nation, and she did exactly that by leading with courage in her design of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.