The first art therapy graduate program in the world began at Drexel University, 50 years ago.
While there may only be a few thousand art therapists worldwide, Philadelphia is home to early pioneers of the field. Today, the Creative Art Therapies Department is one of the leaders worldwide in terms of clinical preparation as well as research in art therapy, music therapy and dance movement therapy.
“We have a lot of historical heft and legacy,” said Girija Kaimal, interim chair of the Creative Art Therapies department.
This year, it commemorates the milestone with an art exhibit at the Leonard Pearlstein Gallery, which runs from April 2 through May 25. Works of all kinds, media and sizes fill the gallery, lifting the curtain to show what the therapists create to process their own lives.
The types of art run the gamut. Kaimal’s own work opens the show, a magnetized black board with an array of delicately painted seashells with little magnets that can be moved around. It is meant to be interactive, she said.
At the center of another wall hangs a painting called “The Palestinian Olive Tree” by Lauren D. Messina, which depicts a lone tree at the center of the canvas, framed by tear-like pastel drips of paint. In another, balled up scraps of yarn and shredded textiles hang from the ceiling, called “Emotional Support Burnout.”
Some motifs were clear, such as processing one’s grief or difficult emotions. Others were more abstract.
Like the mixed and found media sculptures by Drexel faculty and one of the featured art therapists, Denise Wolf. Wolf graduated from the program in 1999, and just so happens to be celebrating her 50th birthday this year.
“It’s kind of like time folding in on itself in a way to be here for the 50th Anniversary as an alumna, as a faculty and to have creative arts in therapy more and more nationally recognized as a viable credential, treatment form of wellness,” she said.
Many of her creations include found objects. She joked she’s like a crow during her walks out in nature.
“I’m like, ‘Oh shiny thing’ and I think that things deserve a second or third or ninth look,” Wolf said.
She has three works on display, some with pieces of snakeskin and found animal bones. Another work features handmade paper made of Kudzu plant, overlaying branches in the shape of a skull lit by tiny fairy lights.
Her choice of form was purposeful.
“I was thinking a lot about brains and rupture and repair,” she explained. “And the way that when there’s an injury or a deficit in one area, there’s lots of other parts of the brain and neural pathways that can pick up those functions that were lost somewhere else.”
Historic roots of the field
Artistic practice as therapy has roots in ancient culture and practice.
“Therapeutic rituals using the visual arts can be found in ancient cultures from hundreds of years ago, such as Navajo sand paintings and African sculpture. These ideas were the precursors of contemporary understanding of art therapy,” according to the American Psychological Association.
“If you go back to any community, anywhere in the world, our oldest civilizations have an artistic practice: art, music and dance,” Kaimal said.
The earliest iteration dates back to the 18th century, where it was dubbed a ‘moral treatment’ of psychiatric patients. It gained popularity as a profession in the 20th century in Europe.
But one clinical psychologist, Dr. Myra Levick, led the charge from here in Philadelphia. Dr. Levick co-founded the American Art Therapy Association and the world’s first graduate arts therapy program being honored this month.
The Creative Arts Therapies department is housed within Drexel’s college of nursing. Fifty years ago, the program emerged from the now defunct Hahnemann University, which became a part of Drexel in 2002. Give or take a few years, the graduate program was at the forefront of art therapy’s official, academic recognition.
Art therapy weaves together artistic practice and psychology, and it is no small feat. Art therapists earn masters-level or sometimes higher level degrees, practicing in schools, clinics or their own private practice.
“The value of art therapy is, when you give somebody materials, you’re asking them to change the station that’s playing for them in their mind,” said Victoria Schwachter, another featured artist, alumna and practicing therapist.
In the late 1960s, art therapy as it is known today was rare. It did not have an official place in medical or psychiatric fields. However, its popularity grew in the 1930s. For instance, when conventional psychiatry methods failed in the 1940s, which often prioritized prescription medication treatments, some pioneering therapists looked for alternative paths.
A surprising part of its history: the discipline was rooted in the military.
“After World War II, a lot of the service members who had what we now know as PTSD, at that time, it was known as shell shock,” she said. “They were not able to be helped with traditional therapies.”
Kaimal’s research has examined how modes of self-expression help veterans with psychological or trauma disorders.
The discipline fuses two modes of processing that often do not require the person to verbally express, also known as talk therapy. These methods “help clients integrate nonverbal cues and metaphors that are often expressed through the creative process,” according to the American Art Therapy Association,
Faculty and practicing art therapist Wolf agreed.
“The connection between experiences and images is much more immediate and words can’t and don’t often hold or communicate that both to others and to oneself,” she said.
The exhibition not only displays work that is personal or expressive of Drexel’s students, faculty or art therapists, but also engages in community artmaking.
The organizers have planned several interactive events to follow the opening reception on April 11, which include scanography workshops, cello performances, mural making and papermaking.
“Arts really are a part of our life,” Kaimal said. “It’s a part of who we are as human beings and it’s a very recent thing to have separated it out. In a way with this exhibition, we are also inviting people to own that part of ourselves.”
For more information on “50 Years of Creative Art Therapies at Drexel,” click here.
