People who are professors at most major Universities are generally expected to be very active in their field. They are usually expected to do research, to publish, to participate, etc. This is often a requirement in order for them to become tenured.

Are art professors under a different set of rules?

When I was an art student at the University of Washington School of Art, in beautiful Seattle, nearly all of the professors that taught there, people like Jacob Lawrence, Alden Mason, Frances Calentano and others all had one thing in common: they exhibited their work regularly and were a vibrant part of Seattle's great art gallery scene.

With a few notable exceptions, when I visit area universities to look at student shows (which I do regularly), I often look up the names of the faculties at these same schools and I often encounter names that I do not recognize.

Nothing unusual there, but it would seem to me, that as a person who visits 25-30 gallery shows a month, plus receives over 100 invitations to openings every month, that I should be able to recognize a high percentage of the names in our area's art schools' faculties.

So, just for fun I am going to look up a few art faculties from some of our area colleges, and see if I can figure out where they are exhibiting, or have exhibited, or plan to exhibit.

And if I can't find that information, then I will take it as a 21st century negative mark in the sense that if you are an art professor, you should have a good, solid Internet footprint.

I'll start with the Maryland Institute College of Art, one of the best art schools in the nation.

In two clicks I can find this impressive page about MICA's faculty. Question: 231+ people in the faculty? WOW! That's a lot!

MICA gets an A+ for their Faculty listing (A-K here and L-Z here).

And in these faculty listings I find some good things and also some holes. For example, one of the persons teaching Foundation courses' most recent exhibition was in 1995! Compare that to Timothy App (whose work I know and recognize). He has a solid and consistent exhibition record; however, App does not seem to have a website. Perhaps MICA just needs to pay more attention to updating their faculty's resumes online.

Some of the Faculty Directory listings have links to the teacher's websites. But MICA needs to augment this directory with a link to every single art teacher that has a website. And if any of them does not have a website... then that tells me something, doesn't it?

MICA boasts some very well-known names in their faculty listing. People like my good friend Joe Shannon, Jyung Mee Park (no website that I can find), Raoul Middleman, Connie Imboden, Trawick Prizewinner Richard Cleaver and many others.

So MICA gets a passing grade, but they really need to stay on top of the website and update it, and definately link it to the person's web presence.