An exhibition highlighting the contributions of artists to state fairs across the United States is currently on display in Washington, D.C. And the ribbon-winning work of a few North Carolina artists is featured there, just steps away from the White House.
State Fairs: Growing American Craft is an exhibition dedicated to artists’ contributions to the tradition of state fairs. The exhibition features the work of more than 240 artists dating from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. Artists and 4-H clubs from 43 states and tribal nations are represented. The exhibit is on display at the Renwick Gallery, located at Pennsylvania Avenue and 17th Street in Washington, D.C.
The exhibit showcases the art found across fairgrounds in the country — from quilts and needlework to a tower of glass jars of canned vegetables. The exhibit displays many crafts that can be entered in competitions at the N.C. State Fair and found on display there. Many crafts like crochet, pottery, needlework, clothing and others are part of state fairs across the nation, some states and regions feature their own unique competitions.
For example, at the state fairs in Iowa, New York, Illinois, Minnesota and other states, life-size butter sculptures made from thousands of pounds of butter are on display. The exhibit features such a spectacle — a life-size cow sculpted out of butter. The exhibit also features an iconic spectacle from the State Fair of Texas: size 96 boots.
A piece by North Carolina sculptor and jewelry maker Morgan Hill is on display in the exhibit. Titled Smorgasbord, the piece is an elaborate necklace featuring various “fairgrounds finds” — a ride ticket, candy, loose change, bits of food and a lost key.
Hill lives in Penland, near Spruce Pine. She has roots in woodworking, interior design and metal work. Her jewelry line, Bad Habits, is also on sale in the exhibit gift shop.
A tray basket weaved by Eva Queen Wolfe in the late 1900s is also on display at the exhibit. Wolfe lived in the Qualla Boundary of the Cherokee Indian Reservation in western North Carolina. She died in 2004.
The Cherokee Indian Fair was established in 1914 to celebrate Cherokee cultural practices and attract tourists to the ancestral lands in western North Carolina. Wolde regularly displayed her basketry techniques at the fair and won numerous prizes for her baskets. The basket on display in D.C. is a tray basket of double-weave rivercane with bloodroot and butternut dyes.
The exhibit opened in August 2025 and is on display until Sept. 7, 2026, with free admission. The Renwick Gallery is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Find more details here: State Fairs: Growing American Craft | Smithsonian American Art Museum. And be sure to visit the Commercial and Education Buildings during the 2026 N.C. State Fair from Oct. 15-25 to see handicrafts like these on display!