GEDDES — Butter usually knows its role.

It melts into toast, disappears into cookie dough and makes pancakes worth eating. At the New York State Fair, however, butter gets 13 days as a main attraction.

The curtain came off the fair’s 2026 butter sculpture Tuesday morning, revealing a depiction of the state fair, the Empire State Building in Manhattan, Doubleday Field in Cooperstown, buttery fireworks and a dairy farm.

This year’s creation is titled “Milk. Memories. Tradition. Rooted in New York.” It celebrates the state’s connection to America’s pastime, America’s first state fair, America’s most recognized skyline and ice cream, one on of the country’s favorite summer treats.

Sculptors Jim Victor and Marie Pelton spent 12 days inside a 45-degree cooler in the Dairy Products Building turning 800 pounds of unsalted butter into the finished display.

That’s 3,200 sticks of butter, enough to smear across 76,800 slices of toast. Laid end to end, those sticks would stretch nearly a quarter-mile.

The butter came from O-AT-KA Milk Products in Batavia. It’s butter that, for a variety of reasons, doesn’t meet specifications for retail sale. Rather than send it to waste, the American Dairy Association North East puts it to considerably more artistic use.

Producing that much butter requires about 1,972 gallons of milk, or roughly one day’s work from 212 cows.

“I absolutely love it,” said the state’s Department of Agriculture and Markets Commissioner Richard Ball. “What better way to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary than with the many longtime traditions that bring us together, including New York dairy, baseball and fireworks.”

The sculpture continues a state fair tradition that dates to 1969, when William Clements carved a cow jumping over the moon. Victor and Pelton have handled the assignment together since 2003, creating everything from Olympic athletes and state troopers to cows producing renewable energy.

Once the fair ends, the sculpture will not wind up on pancakes. The butter will head to Noblehurst Farm in Pavilion and recycled into renewable energy.

The State Fair opens at 9 a.m. today and runs through Labor Day, Sept. 7.