Maya Lin: A Study of Water

Abstract

The Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art’s exhibition Maya Lin: A Study of Water expertly navigated the surging tension between the global and the local in ecocritical art history (as well as in Lin’s oeuvre). Lin drew on extensive ecological knowledge in “poetic representations of the Chesapeake Bay in glass marbles and silver presented alongside rivers made of steel pins, icebergs made of plaster, and waves made of wood.”1 Guest Curator Melissa Messina’s panel texts crisply captured the interconnected themes of climate change, ice melt, deforestation, and sea level rise in a way that was equally rich for those well-versed and those coming to the topics for the first time, revealing, in Lin’s words, “things we may not be thinking about.”