Mary Jo Watson

Mary Jo Watson is a Seminole art historian and director emeritus and a regents professor at the School of Art and Art History at the University of Oklahoma.

Education and background An enrolled member of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, Mary Jo Watson was born in Seminole, Oklahoma, 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 University of Oklahoma.

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.

She has also served as the curator of Native American art at OU's Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art.

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. 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 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.