Mary Jo Watson is a

Seminole The Seminole are a Native American people who developed in Florida in the 18th century. Today, they live in Oklahoma and Florida, and comprise three federally recognized tribes: the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, the Seminole Tribe of Florida, ...

art historian Art history is the study of artistic works made throughout human history. Among other topics, it studies art’s formal qualities, its impact on societies and cultures, and how artistic styles have changed throughout history. Traditionally, the ...

and director emeritus and a regents professor at the School of Art and Art History at the

University of Oklahoma The University of Oklahoma (OU) is a Public university, public research university in Norman, Oklahoma, United States. Founded in 1890, it had existed in Oklahoma Territory near Indian Territory for 17 years before the two territories became the ...

. Her work focuses on the theory and development of teaching methodology for

Native American art The visual arts of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas encompasses the visual artistic practices of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas from ancient times to the present. These include works from South America and North America, which in ...

Education and background

An enrolled member of the

Seminole Nation of Oklahoma The Seminole Nation of Oklahoma is a federally recognized This is a list of federally recognized tribes in the contiguous United States. There are also federally recognized Alaska Native tribes. , 574 Indian tribes are legally recognized b ...

, Mary Jo Watson was born in

Seminole, Oklahoma Seminole () is a city in Seminole County, Oklahoma, United States. The population was 7,488 at the 2010 census. Seminole experienced a large population growth in the 1920s due to an oil boom. History The city was platted in 1906 as a relocatio ...

, and graduated from Seminole High School. She earned her bachelor's degree in art history 1974, her master of liberal studies degree in Seminole Aesthetics in 1979, and an interdisciplinary doctoral degree in Native American art history in 1993 from the

Career

Watson taught for three years at Seminole Junior College and one year at the Bishop McGuiness High School. Beginning in 1978, Watson curated exhibitions at the Center of the American Indian in

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma Oklahoma City (), officially the City of Oklahoma City, and often shortened to OKC, is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Oklahoma, most populous city of the U.S. state of Oklahoma. The county seat ...

. She served as the museum's director from 1984 to 1988. OU offered no courses in Native American art when Watson was a student, so she began teaching the subject in the 1970s and offered the first formal course in 1980. In 1993, Watson became a full-time faculty member in the OU School of Art and Art History in 1993. Starting in 1994, she developed a series of undergraduate and graduate courses on

, including the course, American Indian Women Artists. In 2002, she became an associate dean, and in 2008, a regent's professor. She became the school's director from 2006 through 2013 and developed OU's Native American art history doctoral degree program. She has also served as the curator of Native American art at OU's

Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art The Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art is an art museum on the University of Oklahoma campus in Norman, Oklahoma. Overview The University of Oklahoma’s Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art holds over 20,000 objects in its permanent collection. The museum ...

Awards and honors

Watson won a Governor's Art Award for service and another for education. The Paseo Art Association gave her its Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010. She has judged in the

Santa Fe Indian Market The Santa Fe Indian Market is an annual art market held in Santa Fe, New Mexico on the weekend following the third Thursday in August. The event draws an estimated 150,000 people to the city from around the world. The Southwestern Association for ...

. Watson has earned two grants from the National Science Foundation and one grant from the National Endowment of the Arts. In 2014, the Oklahoma Higher Education Heritage Society inducted Watson into their Hall of Fame. In 2019, the

Oklahoma Historical Society The Oklahoma Historical Society (OHS) is an agency of the government of Oklahoma dedicated to promotion and preservation of Oklahoma's history and its people by collecting, interpreting, and disseminating knowledge and artifacts of Oklahoma. ...

inducted her into the Oklahoma Historians Hall of Fame. Her former students and colleagues created the Mvhayv Award, a scholarship at the University of Oklahoma in her honor.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Watson, Mary Jo American art historians Living people Native American academics Native American women academics American women academics Native American curators University of Oklahoma alumni University of Oklahoma faculty Year of birth missing (living people) Historians from Oklahoma American women art historians 20th-century American historians 20th-century American women writers 21st-century American historians 21st-century American women writers Seminole Nation of Oklahoma people 21st-century Native American writers 21st-century Native American women American women curators American curators Academics from Oklahoma 21st-century Native American artists