The artist who designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., has been commissioned by UT's public art program to create a new piece on the Austin campus.
Maya Lin's 3,600-square-foot sculpture, Floating Landscape, will sit in a restored meadow near Waller Creek and the new Autry C. Stephens Engineering Discovery Building at 24th and San Jacinto streets.
"Floating Landscape is really an environment that you enter," said Andrée Bober, founding director and curator of Landmarks, UT's public art program. "Maya Lin created this meadow of natural grasses and plants, and rising out of this environment is this gentle sculptural form that people can walk across and gather on during the day. It will feel like part sculpture, part landscape."
At night, the sculpture will glow with LED lights mapping the constellations in the sky on the date UT was founded. It will open next April.
"Much of my work begins with the landscape and the experience of moving through space," Lin said in a press release. "This project grew out of the ecology of the site and the openness of the Texas sky, creating a gathering place within the daily life of the university."
Lin will design the landscape with native grasses and plants in collaboration with urban design firm Lionheart Places and the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. Stormwater management was an important concern with this project, Bober said, so the meadow will absorb excess water, slow erosion and restore the natural habitat.
The artwork is funded through the university's Art in Public Spaces policy, which sets aside 1-2% of capital improvement projects for public art. The Cockrell School of Engineering is building a new facility, so Landmarks began thinking about artists who might be appropriate for the site, Bober said.
"Maya Lin was just a natural choice," she said. "She has this ability to move between art and architecture and landscape design and environmental thinking. And that felt especially right ... because that's how engineers work: They solve problems creatively. And that's how Maya approached the site."
Lin gained national recognition in 1981 when she won a contest to design the Vietnam Wall in Washington, D.C. She was just 21 at the time. Floating Landscape will be her first work of public art in Texas, according to Landmarks.
The program gave Lin broad freedom, rather than strict conditions, to create the artwork.
"Maya came back with something a lot more ambitious than what we had imagined initially," Bober said. "She designed this work of art that could also restore the landscape and create a gathering place."
The sculpture is being constructed now, and the meadow will be established over the coming months. Landmarks will host an opening celebration for the artwork on April 9, featuring a talk between Lin and art historian Jana La Brasca.
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