We’re coming off a week indelibly marked, on one side of the class divide, by a shambling TV parade of lunatics, liars, zealots, schemers, enablers, hypocrites, toadies, and dupes, and on the other, by the police shooting of another unarmed Black man in the back, followed by a night of white supremacist mayhem and murder. And still the pandemic grinds on.

Two of art’s Hydra-heads, activism and solace, have been raised repeatedly throughout this period of crisis. The contributors to the ninth installment of Stephen Maine’s “Artists Quarantine With Their Art Collections” speak to both: writing from Richmond, Virginia, Tanja Softić reflects on the pedestal of the Robert E. Lee statue there, which has been transformed into “an urban palimpsest, shrine, and stage,” while describing a print on her wall as “an enraged elegy” that “speaks with shocking clarity. Especially now.”