Public art: the Vietnam Memorial Wall, Washington DC, designed by architect-artist Maya Lin

Vietnam Memorial, Washington DC
Originally uploaded by clare&joe

In 1981, at age 21 and while still an undergraduate, Maya Lin won a public design competition for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The black cut-stone masonry wall, with the names of fallen soldiers carved into its face as requested by the families of the casualties, officially opened to the public on November 13, 1982. The wall is granite and V-shaped, with one side pointing to the Lincoln Memorial and the other to the Washington Monument.

Lin's conception was to create an opening or a wound in the earth to symbolize the gravity of the loss of the soldiers. The design was originally controversial but has since been much acclaimed and is visited by hundreds of thousands of tourists every year. It has also become an important pilgrimage site for relatives and friends of the American military casualties in Vietnam, and personal tokens and mementos are left at the wall daily in their memory.[4][5]

Lin believes that if the competition had not been "blind", with designs submitted by number instead of name, she "never would have won." Some groups criticized the memorial because of its non-traditional design, but Lin successfully defended her design in front of the United States Congress. Eventually a compromise was reached and a bronze statue of a group of soldiers and an American flag was placed off to one side of the monument.[3]