Lynda B. Kaplan – Extended Bio

PRODUCER OF INTERPRETIVE MEDIA 

Lynda B. Kaplan is a media producer and exhibition planner with a special interest in bringing narratives to life. As a documentary film and video producer and director she has organized corporate communication campaigns, produced fundraising films, and managed the research and writing for news and information programming. As an exhibition planner she has worked in collaboration with teams of designers and interpretive researchers to tell stories that engage and expand public understanding of historic issues.

As a principal at American History Workshop for over twenty years, Ms. Kaplan served as Co-Curator, Project Manager, and Media Producer for six pathbreaking exhibitions at the New-York Historical Society in 2005-11: Slavery in New York; New York Divided: Slavery and the Civil War; French Founding Father: Lafayette‘s Return to Washington’s America; Grant and Lee; Lincoln and New York; and  Revolution! The Atlantic World Reborn. In Ms. Kaplan’s work with interpretive media on these exhibits, including original videos and interactives, she promoted the use of audio installations to assist with storytelling. A significant challenge in the exhibit work to date has been how to give voice to the voiceless — how to provide insight into the experience of those who historically had no power to create their own documentary records.

As a principal at American History Workshop, Ms. Kaplan was the project director for AHW’s prototype digital history project, Telling Lives. Installed at the New-York Historical Society for five years, the model software and hardware collected over 10,000 video responses to AHW’s exhibitions.

Among other curatorial and media projects for AHW were interpretive exhibitions at the Arizona Historical Society in Tempe; and at Chesterwood in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. In New York City, Ms. Kaplan helped create the Constitution Works program at Federal Hall. She also produced People Make Parks, an interactive exhibition at the Municipal Art Society; thematic exhibits for the Luce Center for the Study of American Culture at the New-York Historical Society; and audio interpretive elements at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum.  

Ms. Kaplan produced and directed a documentary film, Du Bois in Our Time, for the University Museum of Contemporary Art at UMASS, Amherst, which received two film festival awards, and a video for the Mellon Foundation, Our Compelling Interests, which accompanied an initiative about diversity in democracy.

Biographical
Ms. Kaplan worked for several years in theatrical management before she began working in film and video. She was an associate producer for two Emmy award-winning programs at WCBS-TV. She also worked at ABC’s Good Morning America both as a researcher and field producer. Her film work in the corporate world includes film projects for The Wall Street Journal, International Paper Company, The Girl Scouts of America, Metropolitan Life Insurance Company and Ogilvy & Mather Advertising, among others. Before joining American History Workshop, Ms. Kaplan was a researcher for several PBS programs and served as Producer / Director for Adam Smith’s Money World on PBS.

Education
B.A., Speech and Theater, University of Illinois