Maya Lin has been selected to receive the 21st Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, a $300,000 award presented annually to “a man or woman who has made an outstanding contribution to the beauty of the world and to mankind’s enjoyment and understanding of life.”
The artist and architect, who first rose to fame with her design for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC, was chosen from 100 nominees spanning across all fields of the arts. She was lauded for her “last memorial” - What Is Missing? - in which she has been developing for the past seven years in hopes to raise awareness about the degradation of our planet and rapid extinction of the world’s animals and plants.