16 Facts About Josephine Myers-Wapp

Josephine Myers-Wapp was a Comanche weaver and educator.

Josephine Myers-Wapp taught weaving, design, and dance at the institute, and in 1968 was one of the coordinators for a dance exhibit at the Mexican Summer Olympic Games.

Josephine Myers-Wapp has work in the permanent collection of the IAIA and has been featured at the Smithsonian Institution.

Josephine Myers-Wapp was one of nine children: Mima, Randlett Cragg, Rudolph Fisher, Catherine, Josephine, Melvin, Walker, Vincent, and Alvin.

Josephine Myers-Wapp taught basket weaving, beading, and pottery making to beginners, and taught the more advanced students to make rag dolls, cross-stitch, dyeing, fingerweaving, rag weaving, and spinning.

Josephine Myers-Wapp continued to teach art and married Edward Wapp c 1940, giving birth to their first child, Barbara, in August 1940.

Josephine Myers-Wapp expanded the arts department throughout her time at Chilocco and by the 1950s had created a drama department, which performed ceremonial dances for the White House Conference on Children and Youth in 1960.

Josephine Myers-Wapp continued her own studies during the summers and earned her bachelor's degree in education in 1959 from Oklahoma State University.

Josephine Myers-Wapp taught at Chilocco until 1961, then taught briefly at the Santa Fe Indian School before being selected as one of the first teachers for the newly established Institute of American Indian Arts.

Josephine Myers-Wapp continued her own studies, earning a master's degree from the University of New Mexico.

Josephine Myers-Wapp encouraged her students to take the skills they learned in their home economics courses and bring them into her traditional techniques course, as an expression of their tribal pride.

Josephine Myers-Wapp served on the committee which founded the Comanche National Museum and Cultural Center in Lawton, Oklahoma, and her work was displayed at the museum's opening in 2007.

Josephine Myers-Wapp served on the museum's board for several years, and in 2009 was the featured artist at an event showcasing her works for her 97th birthday.

Wapp's work was featured at the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian in Manhattan in 1994, to help fundraise for the 2001 projected opening of the National Museum of the American Indian at the National Mall in Washington, DC In 2009, her work was exhibited at the Oklahoma State Capitol in a solo exhibition titled The Artistic Legacy of Josephine Myers-Wapp: The Weaving of Stories and Tradition.

Josephine Myers-Wapp's teaching career was widely influential; Wendy Ponca, who followed Sandy Wilson in teaching Wapp's traditional techniques courses in 1982, drew on both Wapp and Wilson's legacies in teaching Native fashion designers into the 1990s.

Josephine Myers-Wapp won multiple awards for her contemporary Native fashion designs, taking first prize from the Santa Fe Indian Market every year from 1982 until 1987.