Mary Elizabeth Shelby, who lived in Kansas City, MO, created this quilt using 11,923 buttons, sewed on to a tablecloth in a pattern she saw in the Kansas City Star in 1938.

One of the many displays in the Renwick Gallery’s new exhibition, “State Fairs: Growing American Craft,” dedicated to artists’ contributions to the great U.S. tradition of state fairs with more than 240 artworks on view, dating from the mid-nineteenth century to the present.

‘Luna Giant Silk Moth’ (2021), posted earlier: