KGOU: Interview with Mary Jo Watson about Indian art degree

WATSON: If you can imagine, for almost a century people have looked on this art as primitive and not "good" art. It’s totally different. The standards are different for Native Art than European art. We’re working on a way to teach Native American art by using Native American terminology and the ideas of what it is about.

MORRELL: You get to OU and they don’t have a Native art program. Could you describe the college years and what you learned and how it motivated you to come up with the Native Art program?

WATSON: I was thrilled to study all the arts around the world practically. It was primarily based on European Aesthetics and European standards, but that was fine because that’s an important, huge part of the history of art worldwide. I became interested and said, “What about Indian art? We don’t have any Indian art to talk about!”

So, I proposed a course and got started through the Indian studies program with one course a long time ago in the 70’s. The first official art class I taught at the school of art was in 1980. I taught in the night school, I was an adjunct. I’ve had several people help me with this, the provost at the time Dr. Morris and Dr. Ariel Morgan Gibson helped put the course together.