The sophisticated populism of Faith Ringgold’s art allows it to glide across cultural and generational boundaries, like those separating children’s storybooks from mature meditations on history and identity. Organized by Dan Cameron, this first museum exhibition devoted to her narrative quilt-paintings features two series: “The French Collection,” which tells of an African-American artist in ’20s Paris, and “The American Collection,” in which the subject’s daughter becomes an artist in postwar America. Oct. 1, 1998–Jan. 3, 1999; travels to Baltimore Museum of Art and additional venues.

— Barry Schwabsky