Word: viets
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...deceptively simple design -- entry No. 1,026 in a contest she never dreamed she would win -- had enabled America not only finally to confront the outcome of the Viet Nam War but also to begin the long process of healing. The memorial made it possible for the country to come together and honor those who had served -- those who had died and those who had come home to anything but a hero's welcome. Lin was proud of her achievement, yet disillusioned by the negative reactions her design had initially elicited ("a black gash of shame," to cite...
...home but hoped she would seriously consider the reason for his call: he wanted to know if she would be open to the idea of creating a memorial to those who had given their lives in the struggle for civil rights. Since she had designed the much celebrated Viet Nam Veterans Memorial, he was certain that she was the right, perhaps only, person to do this. As with Viet Nam, there had never been such a memorial...
Seven years have passed since the Viet Nam memorial was dedicated in Washington. Seven years since the heated, at times ugly, controversy that swirled around the design and its designer seemed to evaporate, in an instant, once the nation could witness for itself the overwhelming effect those two walls of polished black granite have on all who visit them, place flags and flowers beside them and touch the more than 58,000 names inscribed on them...
Even though this array of projects suggests an artist who refuses to specialize, who doesn't see limits, who, perhaps most important, doesn't want to be forever categorized as the "designer of the Viet Nam memorial," her approach to her work is intrinsically the same as it has always been. When she looks at a site, she says, she considers more than the mere physicality of it. She considers the "emotional and psychological context" of the place -- the people, the background, the history. Then there is the form itself. "Tactility," she says suddenly, with such emphasis that it suggests...
...pauses, seems lost in thought, then begins again, determined to make her point. "I just don't think we give enough credit to our public. The Viet Nam memorial was first seen as some sort of elitist statement. It's like you see it before you really see it. But if you don't have preconceived notions, the presence of the object will touch you in some way, and you'll be in dialogue with it. I mean, what do you do with people like Tom Wolfe? His fear of modern art is sad. He must have been flogged with...