The Phillips Collection is perhaps best known for Renoir’s “Luncheon of the Boating Party,” a large canvas of French folks chatting and eating and sipping along the banks of the Seine in the 1880s.

For me and for many who appreciate American art, the Phillips is important and deserves more credit as the home for Jacob Lawrence’s “Migration Series.” Lawrence, one of the nation's best known African American artists, painted 60 small oils that tell the narrative of American blacks as they made their way from south to north during World War I.

Duncan Phillips bought 30 of the paintings for his gallery at the corner of 21st and P Streets, N.W., a few blocks west of Dupont Circle; New York’s Museum of Modern Art has the other 30. Now the Phillips has united all 60 paintings in a traveling exhibition that went on display a few weeks ago.

Don’t miss the chance to see the entire Migration Series. Renoir’s work is parked at the Phillips all the time; seeing Lawrence’s 60 pieces together is a rare pleasure.

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The Phillips is the rare art museum that is rooted in the Washington, D.C., community. I love the collection because the galleries are intimate like a living room and the exhibitions are so accessible. I fell hard for for the Calder and Miro show; I never tire of the Impressionists. But the Migration Series is giving the Phillips the chance to deepen its connection to the community, by bringing Lawrence’s life and work into the public schools.

“It’s easy to take Lawrence’s work as a narrative series to children who can use it to think about their own narratives,” says Suzanne Wright, the museum’s director of education. “His story really resonates.”

The Phillips created a lively teaching kit with DVD’s and a binder packed with art and lessons and original letters and photographs and stories about Lawrence and his work. The show and the teaching kit are going nationwide. So far Wright says the museum has connected with nine local schools, from Ross elementary near Dupont Circle to M.C. Terrell on Wheeler Road in Congress Heights, one of the city’s roughest neighborhoods.

Three works by Terrell’s students hang in the wall in a lower gallery in Phillips’ new wing. Based on the Migration Series, they are collaborative collages of people and places. My favorite depicts four figures in the foreground with the Capital dome, the Washington Monument and the D.C. flag above.

Jake Lawrence, who died in 2000, would have liked the piece, called “creating new lives.” The power of his work lies in his simple yet stark figures and settings. There is nothing soft and gauzy about his paintings or the subject matter of the migration. The tale told by Lawrence’s panels is one of poverty and hardship, deprivation and discrimination — but in the end, it is often hopeful.

Panel 58 shows children in a classroom, 59 shows blacks voting, the last shows more folks arriving.

Its title reads: “And the Migrants Kept Coming.”

And Jacob Lawrence’s work keeps teaching.