wrote the exhibition catalog. The museum has expanded its holdings of the artist through important acquisitions and donations, notably, the acquisition of seminal works from the Judy Saslow Collection. Popular and scholarly perception In 1942, when detailing Traylor's exhibitional debut, local journalists heralded the "primitive" and "African" quality of his artwork. Subsequent reviews followed in line. The Montgomery Advertiser published an article entitled "The Enigma of Uncle Bill Traylor: Born A Slave, Untutored in Art, His Paintings Are Reminiscent of Cave Pictures – And Picasso." This racialized framing of Traylor's work endured throughout most of the 20th century. In 2013 the American Folk Art Museum hosted a full-day symposium, Bill Traylor: Beyond the Figure, to discuss his complicated legacy. Looking towards Traylor's personal history, Alana Shilling from The Brooklyn Rail warned against viewing Traylor's pieces exclusively in terms of their aesthetic value. "To discount" his personal struggles "is to ignore what makes Traylor not only a noteworthy artist, but also an eloquent annalist of a nation’s history: its brutality." Traylor's life and art were the subject of a 2012 children's book, It Jes’ Happened: When Bill Traylor Started to Draw, written by Don Tate and illustrated by R. Gregory Christie. The Smithsonian Museum of American Art's retrospective, Between Worlds: The Art of Bill Traylor, September 2018 - April 2019, received considerable popular attention, including articles in The New Yorker, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. It was also featured on CBS News Sunday Morning. The symposium held in 2019, in conjunction with the Traylor retrospective at Smithsonian Museum of American Art, discussed how new information about his visual record of African-American life could provide insight into the story of the US. In 2021, a documentary by film-maker Jeffrey Wolf on Bill Traylor's life, entitled Bill Traylor: Chasing Ghosts, was released. Controversies In November 1992, Traylor's heirs filed suit against Shannon for possession of Traylor's drawings. The suit was settled in 1993, with Shannon agreeing to transfer a dozen of Traylor's works, then valued at $10,000 to $25,000 US dollars each, to Traylor's heirs. Both parties released a joint statement that recognized Shannon's contribution to Traylor's fame. The 2009 publication of Mechal Sobel's book Painting a Hidden Life: The Art of Bill Traylor sparked considerable controversy. Within it, Sobel explored a number of claims: Traylor's supposed murdering of his wife's lover, the Birmingham police's lynching of Traylor's son in