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

Part of the Museum’s ongoing “In Conversation” series, Art, Science, and Imagining the Planet’s Future: In Conversation with Sean Decatur and Maya Lin asks important questions about art as a powerful communication tool to raise awareness and inspire creative solutions as the climate crisis intensifies.

In this dialogue, 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.

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.