Myra Levick and Paul Fink, MD, director of Hahnemann’s program, in an undated photo.
The world’s first graduate program in arts therapy to matriculate students was founded at the then-Hahnemann Medical College and Hospital in 1969, which became Hahnemann University in 1981 and was absorbed by Drexel in 2002.
So it’s fitting that in 2019, as the American Art Therapy Association (AATA) celebrates its 50-year anniversary, a Drexel professor — who graduated from the institution that initiated the program and teaches at the institution that absorbed it — was recently voted to lead the organization.
Girija Kaimal, an associate professor in the College of Nursing and Health Professions’ Creative Arts Therapies Department, was sworn in as AATA’s president-elect, a position she will retain for two years before becoming president for two more years. She follows in the footsteps of Myra Levick, who co-founded the American Art Therapy Association in 1969 and served as its first president.
Levick also co-founded the world’s first graduate program in arts therapy to matriculate students at the then-Hahnemann Medical College and Hospital. At that time, art therapy wasn’t generally well-known or accepted within the medical community. Both the program and the professional organization launched in part to grow the field as a mental health discipline separate from psychiatrics, with its own practices, training and education.
What made the creation of Hahnemann’s arts therapy program so radical was that it was housed in a medical college, where its students could work alongside psychiatrists and nurses.
“AATA’s mission, simply put, is to advance the field,” says Kaimal.