Collectors, can’t tell Ken Burns quilts are quaint

THE NEW YORK TIMES
Show Us Your Walls
By Judith H. Dobrzynski

I don’t have a quilt that gives me more pleasure than this one,” the filmmaker Ken Burns said of the “Circular Wreath” quilt that hangs above his bed in his Manhattan apartment. An exhibition of his quilt collection opens this week at the International Quilt Study Center & Museum in Lincoln, Neb. Credit: Benjamin Norman for The New York Times

NEW YORK---This week, the International Quilt Study Center & Museum in Lincoln, Neb., will reveal a surprising side of the prolific filmmaker Ken Burns: He collects quilts. The exhibition “Uncovered: The Ken Burns Collection” will display 28 of them for the first time. Mr. Burns has been buying American quilts since the mid-1970s, often on prowls through antique stores on the back roads of New England; before too long, dealers began coming to him. He now owns about 75 quilts, split among his home, office, barn and lake house in New Hampshire. He also keeps three in his Manhattan apartment, including his favorite, the “Circular Wreath” quilt, which hangs above his bed. [More]