密歇根新闻广播 林璎从五大湖汲取的灵感

The artist and architect Maya Lin is best known for her work designing the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C. Lin designed that monument in 1981 when she was still a college senior. Since then, she's gone on to design numerous buildings, sculptures, and landscape installations around the world.

Her latest exhibition Maya Lin: Flow opens Saturday at the Grand Rapids Art Museum. Stateside talks to the museum's chief curator Ron Platt about Lin's inspiration for the exhibit, and what visitors can expect to see.

Platt says the exhibit gets its name from its focus on water, and is made up of seven large scale sculptural works.

They sort of represent her different interests in scientific mapping and technology, her real sort of savvy¹ understanding of materials and what they can do, and then her just interest in the environment and humankind's relationship to the natural world, Platt explained.

Lin created two new works for this exhibit that feature Michigan bodies of water. Pin River is a representation of the Grand River watershed² created with tens of thousands of steel pins stuck in the gallery wall. Another new sculpture titled The Traces Left Behind stretches 15 feet long, and shows a series of North American lakes rendered in recycled silver reliefs.

It shows all of the lakes, starting with Great Bear lake up near the Arctic circle going down all the way through the Great Lakes, all of the lakes which were created by the melting and movement of the glaciers³, said Platt.

One of the reasons the Grand Rapids Art Museum was interested in curating this new exhibit, Platt says, was to draw attention to Ecliptic. That's the landscape installation and park designed by Lin that sits directly in front of the museum. It is better known as Rosa Parks Circle. That work, which Lin designed two decades ago, also centers around water in its different forms. It features a winter ice rink, a water vapor⁴ fountain, and a flat black stone fountain.

Another thing about the piece that I think is so remarkable⁵ is it's kind of date stamped. If you think about the lights that shine up through the floor of the rink, they're based on a map of the sky above Grand Rapids at the turn of the millennium⁶, Platt said.

Maya Lin: Flow will also feature a smaller documentary exhibit on the creation of Ecliptic featuring models of the park and video footage. The exhibit will open Saturday, May 18 and run through September 8.

1 savvy   

v.知道，了解；n.理解能力，机智，悟性；adj.有见识的，懂实际知识的，通情达理的

参考例句：

• She was a pretty savvy woman.她是个见过世面的漂亮女人。
• Where's your savvy?你的常识到哪里去了？

2 watershed   

n.转折点，分水岭，分界线

参考例句：

• Our marriage was at a watershed.我们的婚姻到了一个转折关头。
• It forms the watershed between the two rivers.它成了两条河流的分水岭。

3 glaciers   

冰河，冰川( glacier的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Glaciers gouged out valleys from the hills. 冰川把丘陵地带冲出一条条山谷。
• It has ice and snow glaciers, rainforests and beautiful mountains. 既有冰川，又有雨林和秀丽的山峰。 来自英语晨读30分（高一）

4 vapor   

n.蒸汽，雾气

参考例句：

• The cold wind condenses vapor into rain.冷风使水蒸气凝结成雨。
• This new machine sometimes transpires a lot of hot vapor.这部机器有时排出大量的热气。

5 remarkable   

adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的

参考例句：

• She has made remarkable headway in her writing skills.她在写作技巧方面有了长足进步。
• These cars are remarkable for the quietness of their engines.这些汽车因发动机没有噪音而不同凡响。

6 millennium   

n.一千年，千禧年；太平盛世

参考例句：

• The whole world was counting down to the new millennium.全世界都在倒计时迎接新千年的到来。
• We waited as the clock ticked away the last few seconds of the old millennium.我们静候着时钟滴答走过千年的最后几秒钟。