Maya Lin Vietnam War Memorial

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Although controversial in its inception, Maya Lin's Vietnam War Memorial adequately fulfills the vision of Jan Scruggs, who returned home wounded from the conflict in Southeast Asia at the age of 19, for a monument to his fallen comrades in arms that would "provide a symbol of acknowledgement of the courage, sacrifice, and devotion to duty of those who were among the nation's finest youth."1 Lin's work, unlike most previous military monuments, rejects the emphasis on heroics in favor of a poignant, contemplative, apolitical design which conveys an almost unbearable sense of loss. Simple, graceful, and abstract, the design specified two 246.75 –foot long walls of polished black southern India granite, set below grade and connected at a 125 degree angle.2 Each segment of the wall is composed of 70 panels. At their intersection, the walls are 10.1 feet high and they taper down to a height of 8 inches at their extremities.3 The largest panels have 137 lines of names.4 The smallest panels have just one line. Each line consists of five names, which were sandblasted into the polished surface by hand, rather than cut into it with machine tools.5 Currently, the monument wall lists the names of 58,175 members of the armed forces who were confirmed killed or listed as missing in action during the Vietnam War.6 Although the complete listing of the names of those killed in action or missing in action, the horizontality, reflectivity, and subdued, un-heroic and apolitical tone were more or less mandated by the memorial's sponsors, Lin's one genuine innovation was to list the dead and missing chronologically, rather than alphabetically, that latter being the accepted norm in military monuments. Lin quotes the purpose of the memoria... ... middle of paper ... ...Veterans Memorial is not primary focus. Louis Torres points out Fredrick's Hart's sculptor "Three Soldiers" and Glenna Goodacre's "Vietnam Women's Memorial" as significant works of art. The articles shows the unjust and tainted opinion of the New York Times author, Daniel Orkrent's commentary. This argument was one primary ideas to contrast the positive and negative impact of the memorial. Warner, John " Memorial Bills, FDCH Congressional Testimony, June 3, 2003." Committee on Senate Energy and National Resources Subcommittee on National Parks. 3 June 2003: ESBCO. Mission Viejo Library., Mission Viejo, CA. 31 July 2005. http://web31.epnet.com/citation. John Warner ‘s speech gave me demographic information, and allowed me give substance to my paper. This is a supplement resource. I used this information as part of my closing summary and support for my thesis.

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