After very sporadic exhibition through the 1950s and 1960s (mostly as part of "folk art" exhibits), collector Edmund Fuller wrote a biography of Edmondson which was published in 1973. His sculpture was included in the influential "Two Centuries of Black American Art" exhibition curated by Fisk University Art Department chairman David Driskell in 1976. In 1981 the new Tennessee State Museum opened with a permanent solo exhibition with six of Edmondson's sculptures featuring loaned sculptures from Elizabeth Starr's personal collection, and the essays in the accompanying catalog sought to elevate appreciation of Edmondson's work as fine art. 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. This exhibit displayed twenty-one of Edmondson's sculptures which is the largest collection of Edmondson's art in the country. In 2016 the Smithsonian American Art Museum received one of its largest gifts of folk art work from Margaret Z. Robson, among them were three of Edmondson's sculptures.