State Fairs: Growing American Craft
Renwick Gallery of the SAAM, Washington
August 22, 2025 - September 7, 2026
State Fairs: Growing American Craft, 2024-2025
Various seeds and flower petals
Courtesy of Liz Schreiber
State fairs have sparked the American imagination with their celebrations of agricultural bounty, mechanical innovations and skilled handcrafts since the first fair was held in 1841 in upstate New York. Craft has always been an essential element of state fairs and Native American tribal fairs, expressing the creative and practical values of handmade goods in American society. State fairs enable artists to display and sell their work and help sustain unique regional and cultural traditions.
State Fairs: Growing American Craft will occupy both floors of the Renwick Gallery, the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s branch location for contemporary craft. It is the first exhibition dedicated to artists’ contributions to the great U.S. tradition of state fairs. With more than 240 artworks on view, dating from the mid-19th century to the present, this exhibition registers the many ways the craft of state fairs has enriched the lives of artists and deepened the understanding of American art.
The exhibition is the culmination of five years of on-the-ground research involving visits to 15 state fairs across the U.S.; collaborative projects with artists in Kentucky, New Jersey, Alaska, West Virginia and Utah; and research in several state historical societies, history museums and archives. Artists and 4-H clubs from 43 states and tribal nations are represented, with all 50 states represented in a photo gallery.
“‘State Fairs’ showcases what the team at SAAM’s Renwick Gallery does best—it is the latest in a series of exhibitions that reassess and uplift craft’s relevance to our everyday lives and American culture,” said Jane Carpenter-Rock, Acting Margaret and Terry Stent Director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. “To spotlight these extraordinary and often under-sung artists is an unparalleled opportunity for audiences to deepen and expand perceptions of craft in the United States.”
Visitors will enjoy show-stopping spectacles like the iconic size 96 boots of Big Tex (a 55-foot statue known as the world’s tallest cowboy) from the State Fair of Texas, a life-size butter cow created on-site by the Iowa State Fair’s official butter sculptor Sarah Pratt and a display featuring a pyramid of 700 glass jars of preserved fruits and vegetables by canning superstar Rod Zeitler. Additional highlights include sculptor Robert Arneson’s break from functional ceramics during a pottery demonstration at the 1961 California State Fair, Lillian Colton’s groundbreaking crop-art portrait of Richard Nixon, regalia from pageants hosted by Indigenous fairs, benches commissioned from craft students at Kentucky’s Berea College, a 1965 butter-carton dress created by the Minnesota State Fair’s Princess Kay of the Milky Way (the goodwill ambassador for Minnesota’s dairy farmers) and much more.
To complement the exhibition, the museum debuts a new site-specific installation by artist Justin Favela in the Renwick Gallery’s Rubenstein Grand Salon.
“The first state fair I attended as a child was the Minnesota State Fair, which we called the Great Minnesota Get-Together,” said Mary Savig, the Lloyd Herman Curator of Craft. “While organizing this exhibition over the past several years, I experienced firsthand the collective spirit of artists getting together at state fairs across the country, sharing their talents and memories with fellow fairgoers. ‘State Fairs: Growing American Craft’ provides a long-overdue spotlight on these exceptional artists. When looking at our history from the perspective of the fairgrounds, a richer picture of American art emerges.”
Each gallery in the exhibition considers personal stories of craft found in different areas of the fairgrounds, from the art exhibits and heritage villages to the parades, dairy barns and rodeos. Ribbon-winning artworks and engaging craft demonstrations illuminate the lives of the artists—their families, memories, honors and struggles. It offers a perspective on the social power of fairgrounds across the United States and dispels stereotypes about rural communities. Many of the artworks on view directly connect the artists’ personal experiences with the experience of the fair. The exhibition also calls attention to people and communities whose experiences with fairs are entangled with histories of exclusion and displacement.
The works in “State Fairs” are drawn from the museum’s holdings and loans from various artists and fairs, private and family collections and public museums and institutions.
“State Fairs: Growing American Craft” is organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
RENWICK GALLERY
Pennsylvania Avenue at 17th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20006
