Dr. Mary Jo Watson

Watson A memorial service was held at 3 p.m. on Saturday, December 20, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral, 127 N.W. 7th, in Oklahoma City for former Seminole resident, Dr. Mary Jo Watson who passed away on Nov. 18, 2025, in Oklahoma City at the age of 88. She has been lauded as a groundbreaking academic and historian in Native American art and art history. Watson passed just a few hours after the death of her firstborn child, Timothy Wantland, age 68, a Claremore attorney and Chief Justice of the Seminole Nation.

Mary Jo was born in Seminole, Oklahoma on April 27, 1937, to Doyal and Opal Watson. In 1954, She married fellow Seminole High School debater, William C. (Bill) Wantland at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Seminole. Wantland’s work with the FBI took them to Washington D.C., Honolulu, in the Territory of Hawaii, where Tim was born, then back to Oklahoma City, where their daughter, Malia and son, Ken were born, before returning to their hometown of Seminole where Bill began practicing law, later becoming an ordained priest, then a bishop in the Episcopal Church. They remained married for 26 years. She later married Oklahoma City attorney Douglas Loudenback, who passed in 2021.

Watson earned her bachelor’s degree in art history at the University of Oklahoma after attending Seminole Junior College, now Seminole State College. After earning her bachelor’s degree in art history, she earned a master’s degree with a thesis on the art of the Seminole Nation, of which she was a proud member. She became the first director of the Center for the American Indian, an organization that later evolved into Red Earth. She later returned to OU to earn her PhD, with a dissertation that examined the work of women Native American artists of 20th century Oklahoma.

A gifted teacher and scholar, she served the University of Oklahoma in a career that spanned 40 years, promoting Native American art and art history, creating courses to teach students about the art of Indigenous people throughout the Americas, collaborating to create a bachelor’s degree, master’s, and finally a doctoral program focused on Indigenous art – the first program of its kind in the United States and one that continues to flourish today. However, her teaching career actually began as a student teacher at Seminole High School, and later she began teaching art history at Seminole Junior college. She was later inducted into the Hall of Fame for both SHS and Seminole State College.

Mary Jo was a tireless advocate for Native American art, lecturing throughout Oklahoma, across the nation and internationally. She played a pivotal role in the creation of First Americans Museum (FAM), offering her counsel on the original cultural advisory committee, and donated her extensive collection of Indigenous literature publications to the museum. The collection is housed in FAM’s Dr. Mary Jo Watson Scholars Library.

Her work resulted in numerous honors and awards throughout her career, including two Governor’s Arts Awards for significant contributions to the arts in Oklahoma, and many teaching awards from the University of Oklahoma. She was a member of the Seminole State College Hall of Fame, the Oklahoma Higher Education Hall of Fame, and the Oklahoma Historians Hall of Fame and was honored with the Paseo Art Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2023, she was inducted into the Red Earth Elders Council in recognition of her lifelong commitment to Native art and culture.

During her career, she lectured throughout the state, nationally, and internationally, and was beloved by countless students over the decades. After she retired from teaching in 2018 at the age of 81, a group of her former students fundraised for the creation of the Mvhayv Award, an endowed scholarship for graduate students studying Native American art history at OU. Mvhayv is Seminole for “teacher.” Of all her professional accomplishments, her students are her greatest legacy, becoming museum directors, curators, university professors, arts administrators, magazine publishers, art appraisers, and professional artists. Mary Jo was preceded in death by her parents, Opal and Doyal Watson, her brother, Tom Watson, husband, Douglas Loudenback, and son, Tim, and wife Melinda Wantland. Mary Jo died just a few hours after Tim. She is survived by her daughter, Malia and husband Steve Bennett, her son Ken and wife Christine Wantland, 14 grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren, as well as nieces, nephews, and cousins.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Mvhayv scholarship fund in her memory: https:// give.oufoundation.org/ WatsonMemorial