Maya Lin
Bluhm-Kaul Keynote

Returning to Aspen for the first time since the 1983 Aspen International Design Conference, artist and architect Maya Lin will reflect on the connection between landscape and memory through the lens of her large-scale environmental artworks and multi-sited, ongoing memorial What Is Missing? (2009). Lin will use sound, image, and community-collected memories to trace the loss of species within the context of our deepening ecological crisis. Her keynote presentation will weave together personal, ecological, and generational narratives to consider how memory can help us reckon with environmental change.

Maya Lin will be introduced by Hans Ulrich Obrist, artistic director of London’s Serpentine, whose multi-decade project of recording interviews with the world’s most significant artists, architects, philosophers, and novelists is the source of inspiration for this lecture series.

Maya Lin is an American artist and architect best known for large-scale environmental artworks, architectural works, and memorials concerned with themes of history, memory, time, and the natural environment. She is the architect of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. (1982), which was recognized with a Henry Bacon Memorial Award from the American Institute of Architects in 1984; the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama (1989); and the Women’s Table for Yale University, Connecticut (1995). Lin’s practice also encompasses site-specific sculptures and installations intended to heighten the viewer’s spatial perception and environmental awareness. Renowned works such as The Wave Field (1995), which evokes the dynamics of undulating waves through shaped earth and grass, and her “Silver River” series of wall reliefs, drawings, and large-scale sculptures charting birds-eye views of major bodies of water, incorporate the use of satellite technology and cartographic tools to highlight the fragility of natural ecosystems. Lin’s extensive ecological research also resulted in the multi-sited, ongoing memorial What Is Missing? (2009), which addresses the loss of biodiversity in the context of our current ecological crisis. Lin was conferred the National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama in 2009 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016 in recognition of her significant contributions to art, architecture, and environmental activism.

Hans Ulrich Obrist is artistic director of Serpentine in London, and senior advisor at LUMA Arles. Prior to this, he was the curator of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Since his first show World Soup (The Kitchen Show) in 1991, he has curated more than 350 exhibitions. Obrist received the CCS Bard Award for Curatorial Excellence in 2011, the International Folkwang Prize in 2015, and the Prix François Morellet in 2025.

The Bluhm-Kaul Keynotes are made possible through a major gift from Barbara Bluhm-Kaul and Don Kaul.

Image: Maya Lin, Storm King Wavefield, 2009. Photo credit: Jerry Thompson, courtesy Storm King Art Center.