On Jan. 6, 2022, while an uneasy nation marked the first anniversary of the violent attack on the United States Capitol, Hamza Walker was rushing to Virginia to extract a statue of a Confederate general and move it across state lines.

Walker, a curator and arts educator based in Los Angeles, was moving fast. Just two weeks earlier, the nonprofit gallery that he directs, the Brick (then known as LAXART), had been awarded ownership of the 100-year-old equestrian statue of Stonewall Jackson in Charlottesville, Va., by unanimous vote of the City Council.

The transfer capped an arduous process for Charlottesville, which had decided back in March 2017, prompted by a local activist campaign, to take down the statues of Robert E. Lee and Jackson that had presided over two public squares since the 1920s.

What ensued has become contemporary history: The “Unite the Right” rally of August 2017, when extremists gathered in protest at the Lee statue and one drove a car into a crowd, murdering Heather Heyer, a counter-demonstrator; an acceleration of statue removals in other cities; and for Charlottesville, a tangle of lawsuits, with the Virginia Supreme Court finally confirming, in 2021, the city government’s right to remove and dispose of its statues as it pleased, including by selling or transforming them.

Walker, armed with his receipt — the Brick paid $50,000 to offset the city’s costs — was hurrying to collect the statue of Jackson. Virginia’s Republican governor-elect, Glenn Youngkin, was due to take office on Jan. 15, succeeding Ralph Northam, a Democrat. Walker wanted the monument out before any new roadblocks appeared.