A Renaissance woman born in Har-
lem during its own Renaissance,
Faith Ringgold has painted, sculpted,
written, sewed, and incited change
all her life. Her fundamental rein-
vention of narrative- based art, es-
pecially her panoptic elevation of
the American craft tradition, has
firmly established her as one of
the great artists of our time. From
the late ’60s, when she was pro-
testing the exclusion of Black and
women artists from museums, to
the late 2010s, when the expanded
Museum of Modern Art proudly
hung her masterpiece, the paintingFaith Ringgold
Essential visionary
BY THELMA GOLDEN