Meet Maya Lin. At age twenty-one

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the National Mall is one of the most visited memorials in the country—but do you know the woman behind the design?

Meet Maya Lin. At age twenty-one, Lin entered and won the nationwide competition held in 1980 to design the memorial while studying at Yale. The V-shaped black granite wall, which features the names of the men and women who perished in the war, drew controversy upon its selection. But millions, including many presidents and first ladies (pictured), have been moved by the contemplative nature of the design and the over 58,000 names listed on the walls. As Lin writes “A veteran can find his or her own time on the wall, and all visitors would be able to see themselves reflected in the names. I wanted the memorial to create a private and personal connection with each viewer to those names.”

In the decades since, Lin has built a successful career as an artist and architect, and her talent has taken her to the White House. In 2009, she earned the National Medal of Arts, and in 2016, President Barack Obama awarded her the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in the East Room of the White House (pictured). He told the crowd that Lin’s “pieces have changed the landscape of our country and influenced the dialogue of our society — never more profoundly than with her tribute to Americans who fell in Vietnam by cutting a wound into the Earth to create a sacred place of healing in our Nation’s capital.”

Images: NARA