Art, Science, and Imagining the Planet’s Future: In Conversation with Sean Decatur and Maya Lin

Wednesday, November 13, 2024

7 pm

Sculptor Maya Lin, shown in her studio, elbows resting on a workbench. Before her are scale models of architectural installations, works in progress.
As the climate crisis intensifies, how can art raise awareness of its causes and consequences and inspire solutions and action? 

In this conversation, Maya Lin, world-renowned sculptor of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, and Museum President Sean Decatur will explore the powerful role of art, including Lin’s last memorial, an environmental initiative called What is Missing?

Through more than a dozen installations in several mediums and in multiple places—including 2021’s Ghost Forest in New York City’s Madison Square Park—Lin has worked to highlight the devastating effects of habitat loss, biodiversity loss, and climate change and to help re-think the problems we face and visualize big-picture solutions.  

Maya Lin is known for her large-scale environmental artworks, her architectural works, and her memorial designs. Lin’s art explores how we experience and relate to landscape, setting up a systematic ordering of the land that is tied to history, memory, time, and language.  

In Conversation with Sean Decatur: Maya Lin on Art for the Climate Crisis is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.