Art, History and Skateboarding
in New Albany
The Carnegie Center for Art and History sees a new skatepark as an important
element to public art in the city’s riverfront.
BY STEVE KAUFMAN | PHOTOS BY DANNY ALEXANDER
How many people look at a skatepark and
see art?
Daniel Pfalzgraf does.
Fortunately for the city of New Albany, Pfalzgraf
is curator of the Carnegie Center for Art and
History on West Spring Street. The building is
a piece of both art and history itself, designed
and built in 1904 as the old Carnegie Library by
noted architect Arthur Loomis for Gilded Age
industrialist Andrew Carnegie.
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When the library was moved into newer
headquarters in 1969, the old building was turned
into the Floyd County Museum. It was given its
current name in the 1990s to better reflect its
history.
The center is dedicated to preserving and
appreciating local history and local artists. Its two
permanent exhibitions are about the Underground
Railroad, a slaves’ passageway to freedom across
the Ohio River and into the North, and about Lucy
Higgs Nichols, an escaped slave from Tennessee
who joined the Indiana 23rd Infantry during the
Civil War as a nurse, and then came to live the
rest of her life in New Albany.
But Pfalzgraf and the center’s staff also host a
number of rotating art exhibits, mostly highlighting
contemporary art. The two exhibits this year
were #BlackArtMatters, featuring 10 different
contemporary African-American artists, and
Pulp Art, featuring work influenced by comic
books and cartoons.