To celebrate the opening of his Haley Gallery exhibition “Lyrical Reconstructions,” American sculptor and printmaker Willie Cole discusses his career and creative process and answers audience questions. Recorded on March 28, 2024, this interview was moderated by Anne Collins Smith, director of the Xavier University of Louisiana Art Gallery.

During the interview, Cole explains his artistic inspirations and evolution. His artwork blends familiar consumer objects with references to appropriated African and African American images, often incorporating steam irons and their scorch marks, ironing boards, and high-heeled shoes. His most recent works—such as “Ornithology,” his 2022 commission for the Kansas City International Airport—repurpose discarded water bottles or musical instruments. “Lyrical Reconstructions” includes new works created for the exhibition using musical instruments, along with past pieces that highlight Cole’s use of art and found objects to address social injustices throughout his thirty-plus-year career.

Cole has showcased his artwork in more than fifty solo exhibitions across the United States and abroad, including at the Birmingham Museum of Art, the California African American Museum, the Fabric Workshop and Museum, the Frye Art Museum, the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, the Miami Art Museum, the Mint Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Saint Louis Art Museum. Examples of his work are held in the permanent collections of the Art Gallery of Ontario, the British Museum, the Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and dozens of other major institutions throughout the United States. Cole was an artist-in-residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem and the first artist recipient of the David C. Driskell Prize in African American Art and Art History at the High Museum of Art.

Anne Collins Smith is a 2021 Center for Curatorial Leadership fellow and serves on the boards of the Association of Art Museum Curators and the New Orleans African American Museum.

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