There are artists, there are works of art everywhere in the society, one does not need to look far before one can feel the impact of art in homes, schools, offices, churches, hospitals, and many other public places in the society, which is as a result of professional practice in visual arts. Our academic institution are blessed, no doubt with expert hands in the different areas of visual art such as: sculpture, painting, textiles, graphics, photography, ceramics, etc who spend greater part of their days imparting knowledge in the different areas of specialization to student? Every year art graduates are turned out of these academic communities including universities, polytechnics and colleges of education, and expectedly, they are to practice what they have learnt in their different institution and where they fail to do so, this should be a source of worry to their institution especially about the quality of their teaching, research work and services to their community. This might further be interpreted to mean that the learner has not learnt because the teacher has not taught. Visual Art practice is often treated as mere manual activity that requires no application of intellect. There is a general over emphasis on academism to the detriment of professionalism in visual art practice. There are institution where art exhibition is not accepted as equivalent of journal articles for promotion, and this has forced a number of gifted and creative visual artists to abandon practice. Some of these professional drop outs, in defense of their actions, go about preaching the sermon according to academic tradition and regulation without which they claimed, there can be no advancement, yet there is a wide gap between thinking in the academic community and the reality outside. This paper discusses visual art practice and professionalism and its significance in the realization of the societal developmental goals; economically, physically and culturally with recommendation that, as a developing economy, we need to encourage visual art practice for the society to grow physically, industrially and culturally among others.
