Amos Paul Kennedy Jr., a letterpress printmaker based in Detroit, collaborated with barbershops and salons near the I.C.A., social sites where the African-American population in particular gathers. “He thought that would be a great way to reach out and speak to an audience that might not otherwise be aware of the I.C.A. or think that it was a place for them,” Ms. Smith said. Over the course of six months, the artist collected snippets of conversation from patrons on issues of the day.

Mr. Kennedy then distilled the text into hundreds of brightly colored letterpress prints that will wallpaper the entrance wall to the I.C.A. “Richmond citizens will walk in and see their own voices reflected on the wall of the institution,” Ms. Smith said.

Mr. Rucker, who is in residence at V.C.U., working with students, is interspersing historical artifacts related to the Ku Klux Klan with his refashioned Klansmen robes. The symbolism of the piece is complicated. Does it “reflect the ways institutionalized racism has in some cases been camouflaged within our current culture,” posed Ms. Smith, or is it “a Judo move neutralizing a symbol of oppression by transforming it into something that is the artist’s own?”

Such nuanced questions are bound to reverberate loudly in this city. “The I.C.A. sets itself in this really rich environment, equidistant from Monument Avenue, Lumpkin’s jail in the center of the slave trade, the tobacco industry, the financial district and Jackson Ward, this amazing center of black entrepreneurship,” said William Martin, director of the Valentine, a nearby museum dedicated to Richmond’s history. “Those of us downtown are surrounded by these tensions of Richmond’s history. You can’t operate without that context.”