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Art Therapy, Occupational Therapy, and American Modernism

Originally theorized as a method of “free” art expression, art therapy emerged from a web of interconnected discourses, disciplines, and institutions that were collectively concerned with art’s potential to improve mental health. The field, developed by pioneering progressive educator Margaret Naumburg in New York in the 1940s, promoted spontaneous art making as a therapeutic and diagnostic tool for the modern mental-health patient. Her “free” approach to art making in therapy differed strikingly from the methods of occupational therapy, a widespread medical profession that utilized skill-oriented artistic practices to rehabilitate patients. By tracing this opposition between expression and skill as it came into focus through programming and exhibitions sponsored by the Federal Art Project and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, this essay sheds light on the relationship between art therapy, occupational therapy, and American modernism. Beyond delineating the cross-pollinating institutional contexts of the classroom, clinic, and museum, this essay stresses the importance of disability and rehabilitation in narratives of American modernist art history.