 Through the 1980s and 1990s Edmondson's sculptures were exhibited extensively, though often in the limiting context of the labels "outsider", "folk art", "self-taught", and "naive".In 1999, Nashville's Cheekwood Museum of Art mounted a major traveling retrospective exhibition and catalog that included in-depth biographical and critical essays on his life and work .This exhibit included donated sculptures from the personal collections of the Fletcher, Formosa, and Overton families.A 2006 exhibition, "William Edmondson, Bill Traylor, and the Modernist Impulse," paired Edmondson with another well-known self-taught artist and argued for Edmondson's acceptance as an artist without limiting labels.