When we think of memorials, we usually think of something carved in white stone, rising up above the ground. We think of the over-sized Lincoln sitting in the shadows behind the pillars of the Lincoln memorial. We think of the Washington Monument, the great phallus rising from the National Mall. We think of a man on a horse, a battle scene, towering pillars, a tank! We think of grandeur.
It stands to reason, then, that the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial, designed in 1981, elicited controversy. Designed by Maya Lin, a then 21-year-old Yale architecture student who won a national competition, the monument looked unlike any before it.* It was a simply a shiny retaining wall, some said. It's practically below ground.
For me, as I walked along the wall, I thought that there couldn't be a better way to memorialize a war--especially a largely unpopular war. This was not a glorification of the fighting, or the dying. There were no men on horseback, no large marble pillars, no soldiers toting guns looking nobly into the distance. There was simply a long, low wall and a list of names. No distractions, no sublimations: these people died, it proclaims. People die when we go to war. But the wall does not pass judgment or tell us how to interpret this fact, it merely states it. This wall gives them a space--each individual--in which to be remembered. What's more is that it makes space for viewers to take part in the experience, to see the reflection of their own face in the black granite as they walk along the wall, running their hand across the carved-out names, forcing them to consider their own relationship to what the wall represents.
*if you ever have the chance, watch the excellent documentary, Maya Lin: A Strong, Clear Vision, that chronicles Lin's journey in the design and finally construction of the memorial
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