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Art Therapist Myra Levick Dies at 96
OB ITUARY
SOPHIE PANZER | JE STAFF
Photo by Bonnie Cossrow.

to do, even in the ’50s and
’60s,” Cossrow said.

Levick retired from Hahn-
emann at age 62 and moved to
Florida, where she continued to
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debuted, Levick was promoted
from adjunct instructor to
associate professor so she
could direct it. In 1976, she
became a tenured professor in
Hahnemann’s Department of
Psychiatry, where she taught
for 20 years.

Cossrow said she continued
to grow as an artist, working
in mediums like sculpture
and knitting in addition to
painting. “She started out doing a lot
of oil painting, a lot of portraits,
portraits of everybody in the
family, and then she did a little
more abstract, and she did a lot
of watercolors and then she did
acrylics,” she said.

Myra Levick
created the American Art Therapy
Association in 1969 and became
its president. The organization
has grown from 20 members
to 4,000 members since it was
founded, according to the online
newsletter Drexel NOW.

In addition to her career,
she was a dedicated mother to
her daughters, who saw her as
an inspiration.

“She was always very
involved in our lives but had
very high expectations of all of
us, and we all went to college
and graduate school and had
our careers because for us that
was the normal, natural thing
OD JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
Myra Levick was president of the American Art Therapy Association.

Philadelphia area in 2018 to live
in Blue Bell Place, an assisted
living facility. She continued to
learn new artistic techniques
and practice art therapy by
teaching classes on art and
aging for fellow residents.

In addition to Cossrow, she is
survived by daughters Marsha
Levick and Karen Gomer, as
well as her grandchildren and
great-grandchildren. Her family and colleagues
remember her dedication to
the people she loved and her
visionary personality.

“She was a feminist before
there was feminism. She was a
pioneer,” Cossrow said. “We were
so influenced by her, we learned
to follow our dreams and be very
comfortable in our own skin
because she was in hers.” l
M PHILADELPHIA NATIVE
Myra Levick was a pioneer in
the field of art therapy — the
practice of using creative outlets
to promote mental healing.

“The art therapist does not
interpret,” she said during an
interview with 6ABC in March
2019. “The important thing is for
someone to appreciate their own
artwork and understand it.”
The artist and clinical
psychologist died Sept. 16 of
complications from a seizure at
the Abramson Center for Jewish
Life in North Wales. She was 96.

She married her high school
sweetheart, Leonard Levick,
when she was 19 and he was
23. The couple lived in Mt. Airy
with their three daughters.

“We were members of the
Mount Airy Jewish Community
Center. The rabbi at that time
was Aaron Gold, and my
parents were very close friends
with Rabbi Gold and his wife,”
Levick’s daughter Bonnie
Cossrow said.

Myra Levick agreed to work
to send her husband to medical
school on the condition that he
would, in turn, send her to art
school so she could pursue her
own career. He became a physi-
cian and made good on his word
— she attended Moore College
of Art & Design 17 years later.

She earned a bachelor of fine
arts degree from Moore, then
earned a master’s degree in educa-
tion from Temple University and
a Ph.D. in psychology from Bryn
Mawr College.

In the 1960s, psychoanalyst
Morris Goldman hired her to work
with his patients at Albert Einstein
Medical Center North and later
at what was then Hahnemann
Medical College and Hospital.

She helped him create a gradu-
ate-level art therapy program at
Hahnemann, which became part
of Drexel University in 2002.

When Goldman died
suddenly after the program
practice art therapy.

Craig Siegel, a clinical art
therapist in the Miami-Dade
County Public Schools, worked
with her on a study on the Levick
Emotional and Cognitive Art
Therapy Assessment, a tool
she developed to evaluate the
therapeutic needs of special‐
needs children. They later
co-authored a chapter about
the LECATA in “The Wiley
Handbook of Art Therapy.”
“She was an individual that
was ahead of her time, a trail-
blazer who fought for causes
for everyone, not just for her
family but for her community,
for those in need, those that
didn’t have a voice,” Siegel said.

“She advocated for the growth
of the profession she loved by
being the first president and one
of the creators of the American
Art Therapy Association.”
She returned to the
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