Officials at NJCU knew they wanted a sculpture or piece of art in front of the Visual Arts Building and, after a first round of proposals was rejected, Lin's brother, Tan Lin, an English professor at the school, suggested his sister.

The sculpture itself is a large pane of glass next to a 2-foot cement well. Inscribed in the well are translations of the word "art" in more than 50 different languages, meant to signify the different nationalities represented at NJCU. There is gravel in the well and it is surrounded by five young cherry trees, each with a light under it.

The ultimate arrogance of artists is the belief that they control the meaning of their work, the shape of their career, the pattern of their own biographical narrative -- and their importance in the larger history of art. Composers dismiss their juvenilia from consideration. Novelists decide they're poets, and churn out mediocre verse. Yet very few artists ever exercise any ultimate power over how they're evaluated by posterity. Lin's artistic work will never have the same power to reshape the way we think about art that her monument did to the way we think about memorials. So why minimize the connection between the two?

All this reminds me of Leonard Nimoy during his "I Am Not Spock" days. In the '70s he did public speaking tours to sold-out houses of Trekkers and screened episodes of Star Trek yet insisted from the podium he was mainly a poet and photographer. It was kind of pitiful but if I were writing about him in the newspaper I would never say he had an obligation to be Spock his whole life.
- tom moody 10-24-2006 5:54 pm [add a comment]

(I think I have the soul of a fucked up librarian)
- L.M. 10-24-2006 7:33 pm [add a comment]

Great, thanks. Now we need one for Maya Lin called "I am not the Vietnam Memorial"

As I recall, Nimoy did a followup years later called something like "I guess I really am Spock after all."
- tom moody 10-24-2006 8:03 pm [add a comment]

You're close, in 1995, he published "I Am Spock". (no picture of that one, as there are a number of useless retarded books that I haven't read yet ...but probably will)
- L.M. 10-24-2006 8:19 pm [add a comment]

the world is still having problems with multiple discipline backgrounds for artists. where in reality allowing cross disciplines to inform what ever current work should be a great asset. artists still suffer from second guessing the art worlds critical opinion (and with good reason as exemplified above). time for everyone to get over it. and its going to have to come from the artists first. be brave and say fuck the provencal bastids! however, its important that the artist be completely up to speed as an artist to help weed out non artists with artistic ambitions who think "oh hell, i can do that". weve already discussed this on toms page under the heading of MIT electronic dudes and movie model makers. eh tom? i would just say maya lin chose to be an artist for what one would assume to be good reasons.
- bill 10-24-2006 10:53 pm [add a comment]

Yes. I'd say her dilemma is not having a breakthrough moment for her sculpture as loud and long as the one for her architecture.
One thing, though, is she doesn't have to accept speaking invitations where they will likely be probing her about the VM.
Obviously this means she can never speak in DC because they're such rubes they will never let her talk about anything but "their" memorial.
- tom moody 10-25-2006 1:52 am [add a comment]