GEOG 420 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Civil Rights Memorial, Maya Lin
5 Jun 2018
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Department
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Monday April 9th: Film: Maya Lin
- won competition for Vietnam veterans memorial in university
- talks about her making the monument and some of the projects she does afterwards
- Lin had to figure out what is a memorials purpose in the 20th century
o about the people not the politics
o only when you accept the pain and the death that you can come away and look at it
o wanted people to cry at the memorial and be able on your own individual power be
able to turn back and return to the present
- viewer/academic: doesn’t make any specific gesture
Fall 1980
- Lin got together with students and make a course that dealt with how man interacts with death in
the built form
- wasn’t until Carter signed it in that they were able to build a monument on the Washington
memorial landscape
- decided that choosing a big architect firm would be contentious (don’t know which is the best)
and didn’t want to do it themselves so set up competition
- Lin had to write an essay to accompany the design proposal
o Took her two months to write because it was important to the design purpose
o Thought it wouldn’t get chosen because it wasn’t a political glorification about the
war but a very personal one
o Meant for personal and private reckoning
- it had originally started with a lot of patriotism described by JFK quote “ask not what your
country can do for you but wht you can do for your country” and many people signed up. But when
one interviewee was had gone over he said all this had disappeared, most people were draftees and
there was little patriotism spoken of
- one opponent who was a veteran was very against Lin’s design
o asked US to reopen competition and make the jury full of only veterans
o thought it was offensive
- big problem they had was chronological list
o thought that people wouldn’t want to see their families lined up in ahuge list
§ Lin argued that if you’re visiting you can take the extra time to go look up
where the name will be laced beforehand
- One opponent Circulated a document that one of the jurors was a communist and that 4 of them
were anti-war
- Only people who fought them with the design were very connected politically
o Obvious experience in lobbying
Tuesday April 10th: Finish Maya Lin Film
- Started another project for a civil rights memorial in Montgomery, Alabama
- found inspiration from martin Luther king quote
o decided it would have to center around water
- memorial looks like a large time dial, with all the significant events of the civil rights movement
circling around and water flowing over
- people could interact with the monument by touching the water and making ripples in it
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Won competition for vietnam veterans memorial in university. Talks about her making the monument and some of the projects she does afterwards. Lin got together with students and make a course that dealt with how man interacts with death in the built form. Wasn"t until carter signed it in that they were able to build a monument on the washington memorial landscape. Decided that choosing a big architect firm would be contentious (don"t know which is the best) and didn"t want to do it themselves so set up competition. It had originally started with a lot of patriotism described by jfk quote ask not what your country can do for you but wht you can do for your country and many people signed up. But when one interviewee was had gone over he said all this had disappeared, most people were draftees and there was little patriotism spoken of.
