Willie Cole’s second exhibition at Haley Gallery, “Old School” explores the meaning of words like “Love,” “Hate,” and “Dixie,” and the acronyms created by their letters, through a series of seven new “chalkboard” paintings. The show also features the largest work Cole has ever created, a painting inspired by the word “Patriot.” Examples of Cole’s chalkboard paintings are featured in the collections of the High Museum of Art (Atlanta, GA), the Studio Museum in Harlem (New York, NY), and the Utah Museum of Fine Arts (Salt Lake City, UT), among others.

In addition to this new group of paintings, the gallery will present a series of rarely seen artist studies, created over more than three decades, in which Cole develops acronyms for the larger works, as well as additional paintings and prints never exhibited in Tennessee. This exhibition is curated by Paul Barrett, who is also curating the upcoming career-survey, “Willie Cole: My Brand is History” at the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts (Montgomery, AL) in 2027.