Richard Rabinowitz – Extended Bio
Richard Rabinowitz, President
Richard Rabinowitz is one of the leading public historians in the United States, with over 50 years of experience in creating new museums and exhibitions on every aspect of American history and culture.
As founder and president since 1980 of AMERICAN HISTORY WORKSHOP, Dr. Rabinowitz has led the creative work of scholars, curators, educators, artists, architects, designers, and institutional planners in fashioning over 500 successful and innovative history programs at sites like the New-York Historical Society, the Lower East Side Tenement Museum in New York; the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute; the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati; and state heritage parks and local and regional historical societies in 33 states and the District of Columbia.
He has organized exhibitions and media presentations on immigration and ethnic community histories in Seattle, Tucson, and Wheeling; on urban and suburban development in Boston, Phoenix, Portland, Chicago, and Albany; on legal and constitutional history in Philadelphia; on the encounter of natives and newcomers in Ogallala and Spokane; and on American popular culture in Orlando and New York; among many others.
Over the course of seven years, from 2005 to 2012, Dr. Rabinowitz served as senior project historian for the New-York Historical Society. During that time, he curated and wrote six enormously successful blockbuster exhibitions at N-YHS: Slavery in New York; New York Divided: Slavery and the Civil War; French Founding Father: Lafayette Returns to Washington’s America; Grant and Lee (co-curator); Lincoln and New York; and Revolution! The Atlantic World Reborn. Each incorporated new research, new ways of interpreting the material evidence of the American past, and new methods of interactive design and pedagogy. His article, “Eavesdropping at the Well: Interpretive Media in the Slavery in New York Exhibition,” published in The Public Historian (August 2013), was awarded the G. Wesley Johnson Award of the National Council on Public History for 2013.
In addition, in 2010-2011, Dr. Rabinowitz led the content and interpretive development of the “Slavery and Freedom” gallery at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington.
Education
A.B., summa cum laude, Harvard College, 1966. Ph.D., History of American Civilization, Harvard University, 1977.
