Background
Blumenthal was born in 1949 in Chicago, Illinois.
Blumenthal was born in 1949 in Chicago, Illinois.
She and Kate Horsfield founded the Video Data Bank in 1976. Her parents were Sunoll and Frima Horwitch Blumenthal. In 1976, while attending the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 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 producing documentaries about artists with Michael Owen. She was also examining the politics of media.
Her 1984 video Arcade, in collaboration with Carole Ann Klonarides and the painter Editor Paschke, was included in the 1989 touring exhibition Making Their Mark: Women Artists Move into the Mainstream, 1970-1985. Blumenthal died of a heart attack on July 21, 1988, in Manhattan, New York City.
In her honor the Video Data Bank created the Lyn Blumenthal Memorial Fund to support artists in the media arts