How do you become a professor teaching fine arts?

Answer 1

Go to University.

A good way to start would be to find the nearest art gallery to where you live. If it's close enough for you to visit regularly, do so. Take a notebook, and while you're there pick up any free brochures they're giving out. Get to know the staff. Eventually you should have no problem arranging to meet one of the professors, or the curator, who will be able to provide guidance for you.

You need to do some groundwork first, because senior academics in any area will take you much more seriously if they see you have a genuine interest in their subject and have acquired some knowledge by yourself.

Also contact your nearest college which offers fine arts, and speak with or email the professor or lecturer there, again after doing that groundwork. Their website will have contact details.

If you have no art gallery close enough to visit regularly, again go to their websites (you can look up the galleries in the phone book, or ask a college or art teacher) and study the information on those sites. There will be links to various other places and pictures: pick a few lines of study which most interest you and follow these, learning as much as you can. Most places will mail information to you.

Eventually, you will feel sufficiently confident to arrange to meet the gallery curator at your nearest art gallery - you can arrange this by email - and make the trip there.

Then it's a matter of following the guidance you're given by the people you contact.

A professorship in Fine Arts won't fall from the sky into your hands, but all the experts have to start somewhere, and most are sufficiently generous as to give others good advice and maybe a helping hand, if they see the true interest is there.

If you should be sufficiently unlucky as to meet an ungenerous and unhelpful academic, they're not in the majority...just forget them, and look for someone who'll be more helpful.

Note: when contacting people and places by email, follow the magic rule: read over your message to see it makes sense and is well-expressed and use a dictionary to check your spelling.

Below is a link to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and also one to the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, but there are many more links in the US and internationally to similar sites.