Maya Lin doesn't like the spotlight — but the Smithsonian is shining a light on her

Maya Lin, in 1988, examining inverted water table being fabricated for the Civil Rights Memorial she designed to be installed in Montgomery, Alabama. (Adam Stoltman)

Nearly all of the people who have received biographical exhibitions at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery — Sylvia Plath, Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King Junior, to name a few — are long dead.

But the museum's latest subject, Maya Lin, is still very much alive and at the height of her powers as an architect, designer, visual artist and environmental activist.