Maya Lin to Deliver Miller Lecture in Art and Art History Tuesday

Art inspired by the landscape will come into focus this spring at the Smith College Museum of Art as Maya Lin, noted American architectural designer and artist, gives a free public talk on Tuesday, March 11, at 7:30 p.m.

Lin, who was awarded an honorary doctorate in fine arts by Smith in 1993, will deliver the 11th annual Miller Lecture in Art and Art History in Weinstein Auditorium, Wright Hall.

Lin’s body of work includes large, site-specific installations, studio artworks, architectural works and memorials. Her environmental works include Storm King Wave Field, Where the Land Meets the Sea, and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.

According to Lin’s website, Mayalin.com, she is currently working on her final memorial, What Is Missing?,  which “focuses on bringing awareness to the current crisis surrounding biodiversity and habitat loss.”

Storm King Wave Field, 2009. Photo by Jerry Thompson, Storm King Art Center

“Landscape is the context and the source of inspiration for Ms. Lin’s art,” according to the site. “She peers curiously at the landscape through a 21st-century lens, merging rational and technological order with notions of beauty and the transcendental.”

Lin’s mother, Julia Chang Lin, graduated from Smith in 1951.

This year’s Miller Lecture coincides with a major photography show at the museum by the writer, scholar and landscape architect Anne Whiston Spirn.

“The Miller Lecture Committee’s invitation to Maya Lin recognizes her extraordinary achievement in the world of art and design,” says Jessica Nicoll, director and Louise Ines Doyle ’34 Chief Curator at the museum. “Her return to Smith is particularly timely, as her ongoing investigation of landscape as a context for her work resonates with the Smith College Museum of Art’s current focus in its special exhibition, The Eye is a Door: Landscape Photographs by Anne Whiston Spirn.”

SCMA’s Miller Lecture series was established in memory of Dulcy Blume Miller, Smith College class of 1946. The Dulcy Blume Miller ’46 Lecture Fund enables the museum to bring a leading artist, architect or art historian to campus each year to give a major public lecture.

No reservations are required; doors will open at 7 p.m. and early arrival is encouraged. Overflow seating with simulcast will be offered if needed. This program is sponsored in part by the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Media sponsorship has been provided in part by the Valley Advocate, New England Public Radio and WAMC Public Radio.