هنر درمانی در موزه تحمل: پاسخها و واکنشهایی برای زندگی و کار فراید تهاتر-براندیس

I have been an art therapist and an art therapy educator for over 20 years and have always focused my endeavors in clinical and educational settings. I have worked diligently to centralize the visual arts in the delivery of mental health services and in the training of psychotherapists. The museum world, although an area of interest, had not been connected to my professional explorations. The extraordinary exhibit Friedl Dicker-Brandeis And The Children Of Terezin: An Exhibition Of Art And Hope, recently installed at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, California, offered me an opportunity to extend these self-imposed boundaries. Invited to utilize my clinical and educational skills to augment the museum’s outreach, I participated in an endeavor that reaffirmed my belief in the expressive vibrancy of the art therapy modality in nonclinical settings. This article outlines the ways in which the theory and practice of art therapy inform an expanded experience of museum viewing that transitions the participant from passive viewer to self-expressive artist and potential exhibitor. It is a story of transformations, both my own and the museum attendees who participated in the endeavors.

The inclusion of art therapy processes in the museum experience offered participants deepened opportunities to encounter the exhibits. In the first phase, the Sunday workshops, brief art-making experiences allowed visitors to the Friedl Dicker-Brandeis exhibit to express their reactions to her life and work and more importantly their personal connections to the psychological issues it stimulated. In the second phase, this experiment was expanded as art reactions to all the museum’s exhibits were facilitated with young teenagers. Overall the attempt suggests the possibility of a new paradigm for museum participation. Viewers who become actively connected to an exhibit through experiential art processes experience a deeper sense of involvement with the museum. Additionally they appear to be more open to the ideas and intentions of the exhibit. The inclusion of art therapy in the museum has been an experience that has transformed me, and, I believe, all the participants.