Ebling Library is excited to announce the opening reception for the new exhibition, Craft/Work: A History of Occupational and Art Therapies, to be held next Wednesday, 16 September from 4pm to 7pm at Ebling Library. There will be food, general merriment, and historical materials, as well as a curator-led tour of the exhibition at 5:30pm.
Drawn from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s medical history collections, Craft/Work traces the intersections of psychiatry, disability rights, social work, and art across three centuries to explore how art- and craftmaking affect our wellbeing. The exhibition moves from the French Revolutionary origins of “moral treatment” in asylums to the emergence of occupational therapy from the Arts and Crafts and Settlement House movements to the surprising influence of Bauhaus emigrés on theories of art therapy.
Please note that the exhibition includes materials that depict graphic wartime injuries and full-frontal male nudity. Historical materials may also use outdated and potentially harmful language to refer to a variety of mental and physical disabilities. Please take care when attending.
Paper collage of old printed forms created by Helena Mändlová during the drawing classes in the Terezín Ghetto organized between 1943 and 1944 by the painter, teacher, and art therapist Friedl Dicker-Brandeis. From the collections of the Jewish Museum in Prague.