Comment on this story What: Maya Lin’s Designs for East Tennessee When: The Knoxville Museum of Art, 1050 World’s Fair Park Drive (call 525-6101 for information) Where: Thru Sept. 19

Maya Lin launches good month for Design Lab

by Heather Joyner Spica

I looked up the word “inevitable” in the dictionary and found a description of Maya Lin’s work: “seeming to be in the natural order of things.” It’s a fitting definition for a number of reasons, not the least of which has to do with Lin’s ability to produce sculpture and architecture that, once completed, seems somehow necessary. Controversy surrounding her efforts, like that in the early ’80s concerning negative responses to her Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., has diminished in time—whether it’s because once-skeptical vets now realize the dignity in Lin’s black granite monument or, more generally, because Lin’s work simply ends up feeling right. In the case of the Vietnam memorial, it is hard to imagine a more moving artistic response to the tragedy of that conflict, and it marks the beginning—at age 21—of Lin’s notable career.

Remarkably, the Haley Farm in Clinton is the only site in the world graced by two of Lin’s buildings, and through mid-September, the Knoxville Museum of Art presents “Maya Lin’s Designs for East Tennessee” as part of its ongoing Design Lab series of exhibitions. Having opened days prior to the July 18 dedication of the farm’s Riggio-Lynch Chapel, the show features models and photographs of both the Langston Hughes Library (formerly a simple barn) and the chapel. Each project reflects the same intuitive grasp of a structure’s essential meaning as does the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

And given that the Haley Farm is so close to Knoxville, museum-goers are afforded a terrific opportunity to experience Lin’s work in person, as well as see replicas of it within the confines of a gallery.

Situated on 157 acres previously owned by writer Alex Haley, the Haley Farm was purchased a decade ago by the Children’s Defense Fund and has become a lively conference and training center for people dedicated to protecting children and preserving civil rights. According to The New York Daily News’ Errol Louis, more than 6,000 individuals have spent time at the farm throughout the past 10 years, attending workshops “on everything from writing policy papers to studying how civil disobedience works.” Writes Louis, “College-age activists, many with dreadlocks and tattoos, regularly sit and swap stories with movement veterans who put their bodies on the line in places like Selma, Birmingham and the Mississippi Delta.” The Haley Farm Freedom School’s 5,000-volume reference library and small bookstore occupy the Civil War-era barn that Lin has transformed, and the new chapel will serve as a sacred space for people of all religions.

The Langston Hughes Library, erected in 1999, is a modernized version of a cantilevered design. Lin describes it in her book titled Boundaries, saying, “The idea was to maintain the integrity and character of the old barn yet introduce a new inner layer. The integration of old and new allowed me to leave exposed and untouched the main body of the building yet build the library within the existing structure.” What we end up with is something from the past reconsidered in terms of its relevance to the present, much as the writings it houses resonate in a slightly different way now as opposed to when they were first committed to paper. The library is, in the words of art historian Robert Storr, “at once unmistakably modern and fundamentally classical, a blend of aesthetic traditions realized in a unified form.”

Although the Riggio-Lynch Chapel is entirely new, its simple use of cypress and fir ties it to the land and to other structures on the property. Named for Len Riggio, chairman of Barnes & Noble, and former New York Deputy Mayor Bill Lynch (both Children’s Defense Fund board members), the nondenominational chapel assumes an ark-like shape in keeping with the Children’s Defense Fund’s motto: “Dear Lord be good to me / The sea is so wide / And my boat is so small...” The Haley Farm website calls the design “reminiscent of a wide-berthed ship sailing on a grassy pasture.” Lynch, a former union organizer just named deputy manager of the Kerry-Edwards campaign, is (according to the website) “expected to tap into [an] army of well-trained young activists and bring their farm-stoked energy into the campaign.”

Certainly Lin has contributed a powerful sort of energy to the Haley Farm. Regarding the chapel, she says, “the ark-inspired design supports the mission of CDF and its Freedom School’s program to carry the nation’s family of children to safe harbor. Architecturally, my goal was to quietly raise people’s hope and elevate their spirits through beautiful surroundings, and in turn, to demonstrate that they are valued.”

The Knoxville Museum of Art’s literature for the Lin exhibition includes the following statement: “Every community needs great architecture to raise the spirits of its citizenry and demand that our built environment receive the same level of attention and thought as our psychological and spiritual lives.” How ironic it is that we must drive into the hinterlands to experience sublime architecture, to escape the sort of slapped-together schlock that’s turning Bearden Hill into a southeastern Las Vegas. But it is contradictions like these that make Knoxville and environs an interesting place—in fact, the perfect place to showcase Lin’s talents.

August 5, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 32 © 2004 Metro Pulse