64 • Introduction to Art Therapy
(including myself) in attendance. The first Honorary Life Membership award (HLM) was
presented to Margaret Naumburg (N), widely acknowledged as the primary founder of
the field of art therapy (Figure 3.13). Additional information about the beginnings of art
therapy in America can be found in A History of Art Therapy in the United States (Junge &
Asawa, 1994) as well as in Randy Vick’s excellent chapter in the Handbook of Art Therapy
(Malchiodi, 2003).
Art Therapy in Other Countries (DVD 3.13)
If Naumburg is the “grandmother” of American art therapy, the most likely candidate for
“grandfather” would be her British counterpart, an artist named Adrian Hill (Figure 3.14)
who published two books, in 1945 and 1951. Hill (A) wrote that he had coined the term art
therapy in 1942 to describe the value of doing his own painting while he was recovering
from tuberculosis in a sanatorium. Invited to offer art to other convalescents, Hill was as
enthusiastic and energetic a campaigner for art therapy in Great Britain as Naumburg was
in the United States.
Although the story of art therapy in England is as long and varied as in the United States,
the growth of the discipline has not been as extensive. Even though the British Association
of Art Therapists was formed earlier (1964), its history (Edwards, 2004; Hogan, 2001; Waller,
1991) suggests that political and economic pressures complicated the development of both
jobs and training programs. But there were supporters like psychiatrist E. Cunningham Dax
(1953), who in 1946 hired artist Edward Adamson (B) (1984) to set up a studio at Netherne
Hospital (Figure 3.15).
Another important promoter of the arts in Great Britain was H. Irene Champernowne, a
Jungian analyst who, with her potter husband Gilbert, founded a residential treatment facil-
ity in which the arts were central (C). Withymead, a creative therapeutic community, was
operated from 1942 to 1967 (Stevens, 1986). At the same time, Adlerian “social clubs” were
being run by Dr. Joshua Bierer in London, where pioneer British art therapist Rita Simon
(1992, 1997, 2005) began her work in 1941. And Jungian art therapist E. M. Lyddiatt (1971)
developed studios in many mental hospitals beginning in 1950 (cf. Thomson, 1989).
Figure 3.13 Margaret Naumburg, first honorary life member of the AATA.