Michael James chairs the Department of Textiles, Merchandising & Fashion Design at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln (UNL), where he holds the Ardis James Professorship, teaches graduate courses in the area of quilt studies, and maintains his studio practice. His textile art is included in the collections of the Museum of Arts & Design in NYC, the Baltimore Art Museum, the Racine Art Museum, the Newark Museum, the Mint Museum, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Shelburne Museum, and the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum (DC), among others. In 2015 the Renwick Alliance honored him as a Master of the Medium in textiles, for lifetime achievement, and he is the recipient of the Luminaries Award from the Fuller Craft Museum (2011), the Outstanding Research and Creative Activity Award of the University of Nebraska system (2009), the Nebraska Arts Council’s Governor’s Arts Award (2008), and an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth (1992), his undergraduate alma mater. His work is represented exclusively by Modern Arts Midtown in Omaha, Nebraska.