Maya Lin doesn't like the spotlight — but the Smithsonian is shining a light on her
Heavily criticized 40 years ago for her Vietnam Veterans' Memorial design, the artist-architect-activist prefers to talk about her artistic process rather than her life
Nearly all of the people who have received biographical exhibitions at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery — Sylvia Plath, Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King Junior, to name a few — are long dead.
But the museum's latest subject, Maya Lin, is still very much alive and at the height of her powers as an architect, designer, visual artist and environmental activist.
Lin's works include the in Alabama, the in Tennessee and the massive, ongoing,and of course the in Washington, D.C. that launched her career 40 years ago.
