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Maya Lin to design Glenbow Museum's new rooftop garden in Calgary

2023-10-30T16:57:00-04:00

Maya Lin Studio has been attached to a new rooftop garden terrace project at the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, Alberta.

The 13,000-square-foot design will complement the new $120 million renovation and expansion scheme from DIALOG that was announced in September of 2021. It will include an all-season pavilion structure, event spaces, and sculpture gardens surrounding a central oculus skylight that doubles as a lightwell for the new JR Shaw Centre for Art & Culture. Lin says the space will “afford a welcoming place that will invite visitors to connect to art, landscape, and the city of Calgary.” The project will be her first-ever work in Canada.

Rendering courtesy of Maya Lin Studio

“This idea that we are recycling a building in the center of downtown Calgary and making something new out of it while utilizing as much of the old building was a huge draw for me. If we can use an existing building in a better way, it is a lot more energy-efficient, it is a lot more material-efficient, and ...

Maya Lin unveils 'Ghost Forest Seedlings' generative art project

2023-08-18T13:06:00-04:00

The artist, architect, and environmentalist Maya Lin is set to release her inaugural generative art project. Titled Ghost Forest Seedlings, and produced by Pace Verso with Web3 art innovators E.A.T_WORKS, the work will be released on September 18 to align with Climate Week NYC.

Ghost Forest Seedlings builds on Lin’s 2021 Ghost Forest installation, which saw 50 Atlantic white cedar trees placed in Madison Square Park to highlight Earth's fragility amidst the climate crisis. The latest artworks, each priced at $1,000, depict a seed or group of seeds that grow into an intricate root pattern over a predetermined amount of time. Each of the 500 unique works from the project will include three components: a signed print of the final root system, a generative NFT that shows the seedling’s evolution in real-time, and a video timelapse tracing the seedling’s complete growth pattern.

Portrait of Maya Lin. Image credit: Pace Gallery

“With Ghost Forest Seedlings, Lin explores the organic growth ...

Maya Lin's next sculptural installation will grace the Obama Presidential Library in Chicago

2022-08-08T13:10:00-04:00

The forthcoming Obama Presidential Library, designed by Tod Williams Billie Tsien, will now include a sculptural installation from Maya Lin, according to an announcement made on August 4 by the Obama Foundation.

The sculptural piece, titled “Seeing Through the Universe,” will anchor the library’s newly-announced water garden, which has been named to honor Obama’s late mother, Ann Dunham. It includes a stone oculus and pebble water feature surrounded by pathways leading away from the installation and into the library’s other recently-unveiled outdoor gathering spaces designed by landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh.

“When we thought about what may be a fitting way to commemorate my mother’s influence on my sister and me, I thought about where she would want to be in this space,” this year’s A’22 keynote speaker said in a statement. “I could picture her sitting on one of the ...

Maya Lin’s Ghost Forest brings the climate crisis to Madison Square Park

2021-05-27T19:09:00-04:00

Artist Maya Lin’s long-awaited skeletal forest has finally opened in New York’s famed Madison Square Park.

With the help of 49 dead Atlantic Cedar trees sourced from the New Jersey Pine Barrens, the 61-year-old Lin has transformed the park into an immersive installation — her first in over a decade — meant to transplant the East Side destination’s nearly 60,000 daily visitors into the frontlines of the fight to prevent deforestation.

Maya Lin (American, b. 1959) Ghost Forest, 2021 Courtesy the artist and Madison Square Park Conservancy Photo credit: Andy Romer

Lin, who lives in Colorado, says she was particularly interested in a kind of environmental phenomenon known as “ghost forests” that are a direct product of insect infestations, extreme temperature increases, and sea level changes caused by climate change.

Maya Lin within Ghost Forest, 2021 Courtesy the artist and Madison Square Park Conservancy Photo credit: Andy Romer

The park itself has played host to numerous public exhibit...

Maya Lin's postponed 'Ghost Forest' to open at Madison Square Park on May 10

2021-02-09T14:57:00-05:00

An immersive installation that visualises the bleak effects of climate change by the US artist and environmental activist Maya Lin, which was slated to open in June last year, will open at Madison Square Park in New York this spring.

Originally scheduled to open in 2020 but ultimately postponed due to the escalating pandemic, Maya Lin's site-responsive installation Ghost Forest will now be on view from May 10 through November 14, 2021.

"Ghost Forest will take the form of a towering grove of spectral cedar trees, all sourced from the region and presented in sharp contrast to the Park’s lush tree line," explains a description of the piece published by the Madison Square Park Conservancy. "The installation builds on Lin’s practice of addressing species loss, habitat loss, and climate change within her work and serves as a call to action to the thousands of visitors who pass through the Park daily."

Maya Lin envisions a 'Ghost Forest' at Madison Square Park in NYC

2020-03-12T16:12:00-04:00

A forest of dessicated trees will rise amid the verdant canopy of Madison Square Park in a forthcoming project by the American artist and environmental activist Maya Lin. In the immersive work, Ghost Forest, which will be on view from 8 June to 6 December, 30 to 40 spectral cedar trees will be replanted in the oval lawn of the park, creating a visually striking micro-landscape that decries the impact of climate change on woodlands around the world.

Commissioned by Madison Square Park Conservancy in New York, Maya Lin's site-responsive installation Ghost Forest aims to address the impact of climate change on woodlands around the planet.

"Ghost Forest will take the form of a towering grove of spectral cedar trees, all sourced from the region and presented in sharp contrast to the Park’s lush tree line," explains a statement published by the Conservancy. "The installation builds on Lin’s practice of addressing climate change within her work and serves as a call to action to the 60,000 visitors who pass through the Park daily."

Maya Lin. Photo: Jesse Frohman, courtesy of the artist.

"Ghost Forest derives its name from the eponymous natural phenomenon: vast tracts of forestland that have died off due to climate change, sea-level rise and saltwater infiltration. To create the installation, Lin worked together with the Conservancy to source dead trees from the Pine Barrens in New Jersey, a vulnerable site that has suffered severe dep...

Salon revisits how Maya Lin won Vietnam War Memorial competition by breaking its biggest rule

2017-10-02T14:12:00-04:00

The most important rule was that entries be non-political. They were to express no opinion whatsoever about the rightness or wrongness of the Vietnam War itself.

As the article points out, May Lin's design of a series of slabs were conceived by Lin as dominos falling—a reference to the "domino theory," prominent from the 50s to the 80s, that posited that if one country in a region came under the influence of communism, then the surrounding countries would follow in a domino effect. With the names of those dead from the war etched on, the memorial's foundation "was a brilliantly devastating political commentary on the Vietnam War: that the 'kids' of Vietnam took a dizzying ride on a series of falling dominos to their collective death."

Maya Lin reveals designs for Smith College library revamp

2016-10-20T13:59:00-04:00

The artist and designer Maya Lin, best-known for her Vietnam Veterans Memorial, will redesign the Neilson Library at Smith College. Her designs for the project, intended to reduce the existing building’s footprint, have been revealed.

Lin will renovate the 1909 Neilson Library and remove later additions that she says create a “telescoping effect”. Lin will also add two “jewel box”, curved wings intended to bring in natural light. An oculus in the central atrium will bring in more light. Additionally, Lin plans to create a “skyline room” on the building’s roof as well as an outdoor patio.

The library is situated on a campus designed by the famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, and the new design aims to restore the open green space that was part of his original, 1893 plan.

Construction is scheduled to begin in the summer of 2017.

via New York Times