Looking for What's Lost: The Artistic Roots of Art Therapy: Mary Huntoon

Abstract

Historically, attention has been paid to particular early practitioners and methodologies to the exclusion of others in the field of art therapy. This paper is about one early art therapist who is among those who have received little attention: Mary Huntoon. Huntoon was an artist who worked in her home state of Kansas as an art teacher, arts administrator, and art therapist from the 1930s through the 1950s. Her approach to working as an art therapist was based in creative process and intuition. Huntoon believed in the power of art to heal and encouraged her patients, whom she called "students," to engage with materials in a studio setting without external disruption. She devoted 16 years of her career to working with psychiatric patients and World War II veterans through art. Missing from art therapy's history is an artistic philosophy of the theory and practice of art therapy. The work of Huntoon offers such a philosophy. Perhaps in remembering Huntoon's practice of art therapy, an artistic philosophy of the theory and practice of art therapy can begin to find its place in art therapy's history. Discovering the perspectives of pioneers who have been left behind has the potential to broaden and deepen the history and practice of art therapy in the United States.