Lyn Blumenthal (1949–1988) was an American

video art Video art is an art form which relies on using video technology as a visual and audio medium. Video art emerged during the late 1960s as new consumer video technology such as video tape recorders became available outside corporate broadcasting. V ...

ist and writer. She and

Kate Horsfield Kate Horsfield (born 1941), is an American artist who focused her work on video art and video documentation. She is also an author and teacher. She is best known for co-founding the Video Data Bank in 1976, an international video art distributio ...

founded the

Video Data Bank Video Data Bank (VDB) is an international video art distribution organization and resource in the United States for videos by and about contemporary artists. Located in Chicago, Illinois, VDB was founded at the School of the Art Institute of Chic ...

in 1976.

Biography

Blumenthal was born in 1949 in

Chicago, Illinois Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

. Her parents were Sunoll and Frima Horwitch Blumenthal. In 1976, while attending the

School of the Art Institute of Chicago The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) is a Private university, private art school associated with the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) in Chicago, Illinois. Tracing its history to an art students' cooperative founded in 1866, which gr ...

, she and Horsfield founded the Video Data Bank to conserve their taped interviews with video artists. She graduated with a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1976. In the 1980s Blumenthal was examining the politics of media. Dedicated to the application of feminist theory to video practice, Blumenthal's early 80s art tapes explore issues of female identity and sexuality as a crisis of representation. Her 1984 video ''Arcade'', in collaboration with Carole Ann Klonarides and the painter

Ed Paschke Edward Francis Paschke (June 22, 1939 – November 25, 2004) was an American painter. His childhood interest in animation and cartoons, as well as his father's creativity in wood carving and construction, led him toward a career in art. As a stud ...

, was included in the 1989 touring exhibition ''Making Their Mark: Women Artists Move into the Mainstream, 1970-1985''. One of her final projects was released in 1987. It is a six-part collection of interviews of women artists entitled ''What Does She Want?'' Blumenthal died of a

heart attack A myocardial infarction (MI), commonly known as a heart attack, occurs when Ischemia, blood flow decreases or stops in one of the coronary arteries of the heart, causing infarction (tissue death) to the heart muscle. The most common symptom ...

on July 21, 1988, in

Manhattan Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

. In her honor the Video Data Bank created the Lyn Blumenthal Memorial Fund to support artists in the media arts.

References

External links

Lyn Blumenthal Memorial Fund
1949 births 1988 deaths Artists from Chicago American women video artists American video artists 20th-century American women artists Jewish American artists 20th-century American Jews {{US-artist-stub