This article is part of our latest special report on Museums, which focuses on the intersection of art and politics.

BALTIMORE — The art speaks in color.

On one wall, there is an explosion of azure, saffron, ruby and emerald, brilliant hues of a sunny village in central Africa. On another, there are subtle yet dramatic autumnal pastels — wheat, chocolate, pumpkin, sky blue — drawn from farm life in the Polish countryside.

They speak across time and history: The African paintings, a densely composed triptych of acrylic paint on plain brown paper, are set in rural Rwanda of the 1990s, as neighbor turned against neighbor in a genocide. The scenes in Poland, among a series of nearly three dozen, handcrafted with needle, thread and cloth, tell an unfolding story from the late 1930s, as Nazis occupied the hamlet of Mniszek.

Perhaps most significantly, the art speaks to viewers, bearing witness to the often unspeakable plight of refugees: desperate, traumatized people fleeing persecution and death.