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. He did not tell the International Quilt Study Center about it, he admitted. “I don’t have a quilt that gives me more pleasure than this one.”

He warmed to his subject. “First of all, you’re faced with a loud but controlled design of these circles and these spots and these dots and the borders. And then,” he said, pointing at the white background, “you go in and you cannot believe the extent of the quilting. There’s some mirrored or deeper round circular things that aren’t in any way what the circles are, and there’s combinations. One may be a pinwheel, followed by something that is more like a traditional flower, with blossoms, and then lots of leaves in between. If you consider the thousands of woman-hours that went into this, it’s just an extraordinary thing.”