Here is an interview that the Contemporary’s Director of Education Kathryn Adamchick did with Maya Lin this season. The conversation was captured during Maya’s visit to St. Louis to install her exhibition Systematic Landscapes. What I appreciate about Art:21 is that it gives the viewers direct access to the artists. The value in being able to hear and to observe an artist at work or play is the greatest perk in being involved in contemporary art. As a non-collecting institution, and due to the ephemeral nature of our work, we find it crucial to document the exhibitions and even the installation process. Traditionally this was done through catalogs and photographs. With the new technology like podcasting and blogging, our ability to access information about artists and their work is easier than ever for those with internet access. The Art:21 series, in addition to its blog and the website, allows the contemporary art audience access to vast amounts of information on artists of our time.The exhibition Maya Lin: Systematic Landscapes was organized by the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington in Seattle. The exhibition featured among others, three monumental installations: 2×4 Landscape, Water Line, and Blue Lake Pass. Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis also commissioned a piece from Maya Lin titled Pin River, based upon the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. Maya also created a special edition exclusively for the Contemporary based on the Mississippi River which can be viewed here: https://www.contemporarystl.org/artistseditions.phpMaya Lin is internationally recognized for her Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C., which she designed when she was a 21-year-old architecture student at Yale University. Dedicated in 1982, the monument is widely recognized as one of the most important public art piece of this century. But since then, Lin has been justly celebrated for a remarkable body of work that includes sculpture, earthworks, architecture, landscape design, and public monuments. She continues to freely cross the boundaries of art, architecture, and design.
