What to build to toast our past? – Orange County Register

Thank God for Maya Lin.

I mean, in many ways, because she’s a talented architect with a long career. But she will be remembered for a monumental design she created in 1981 while still a Yale student: the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC

Extremely beloved and important place, isn’t it? It is in the Top 10 of America’s Favorite Architecture List published by the American Institute of Architects, on the National Register of Historic Places, and is visited by 3 million people each year. It is made up of two 246-foot-high black granite walls, polished and engraved with the names of more than 58,000 American service members who died in the war. It is one of the most deeply moving public memorials in the world. But the love of the public is not always there.

Lin’s design, selected from 1,421 submitted samples, was initially widely opposed and seen as an abstraction scandal.

Because it was clearly not a statue of a soldier on horseback.

In fact, a representative bronze sculpture, “Three Servant”, had to be added a short distance to help quell the commotion. One public official called the wall “a black mark of shame”. Navy Secretary James Webb said: “In my wildest dreams, I never imagined such a stone of nothingness.” President Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of the Interior James Watt wouldn’t even issue a building permit. Forty years on, there is no more beloved public monument in America.

So sure, this speaks for itself somewhat. Since everyone is a critic and most people have bad tastes, we shouldn’t choose monuments by secret ballot of the American people.

But it’s also important to note how difficult it is to remember those who died in war. And in a time when removing monuments to soldiers is not without controversy – Confederate rebels – and even saints – Father Serra thinks – it has not been easy to be a male or female monument.

Older and wiser about who should be memorialized, what public monuments should our age make for the future?

That is the question that the Broad Museum faced when it convened a renowned artist, a distinguished critic and leading urban design official of Los Angeles, who is also a deeply rooted architectural critic. color, in a discussion last month.