FIVE QUESTIONS
By Brooke McAfee
Photos by Bill Hanson
5
QUESTIONS
Closed, but not closed out
Carnegie Center director, Eileen Yanoviak,
using digital to bridge social distancing divide
T
he Carnegie building has
long been an important
cultural institution in
Southern Indiana, from its
original purpose as Floyd
County’s public library to
its current role as the Carnegie Center for
Art & History.
The former library building in downtown
New Albany now serves as a contemporary
art gallery and local history museum. For
director Eileen Yanoviak, expanding the
Carnegie Center’s outreach into the com-
munity and bringing more people into the
museum has been a key focus in her two
years leading the center.
The Carnegie Center has led public art
projects such as the New Albany Flow Park,
a revamped skate park on the city’s water-
front, and the museum’s youth education
program has brought interactive art projects
to local elementary students.
Yanoviak’s vision of reaching beyond
the museum’s walls has become more
10
May / June 2020
important than ever. As the world faces the
coronavirus pandemic, the Carnegie Center
is using technology to adapt and continue
its programming during a challenging time.
The museum closed its doors to practice
social distancing, but it is still engaging
with the community.
We recently spoke with Yanoviak for a
conversation about the Carnegie Center’s
evolving role across Southern Indiana.
1
What kind of growth have
you seen in the Southern
Indiana arts community over the
past few years, and what role does
the Carnegie Center played in the
local arts scene?
So, I think just from own institution, just
starting from the Carnegie and the growth
over the past two years, we have had a 50
percent increase of people we serve. So
our institution has been serving a lot more
people, which is, I think, an outgrowth of
the fact that there’s more attention being
paid to the arts and culture sector in general
as a driver of quality of life in a region. You
get projects like the NoCo Arts & Cultural
District in Jeffersonville, and I know that
New Albany has been moving toward those
kinds of recognitions as well from the state,
so I think you see the arts as a way to bring
character to the region, and there’s a lot of
new developments in that respect — lots of
new public art projects that are underway.
I think the role the Carnegie Center has
to play in that, in part because of its role as
a branch of the public library, is that we are
basically like an anchor source of informa-
tion and expertise, and our longevity just
proves that there are deep roots to the arts in
the community. We’ve got that experience
and depth of background and a collection
that people are interested in, and for all
those reasons, I think the Carnegie serves as
an anchor institution that is also an innova-
tor and a collaborator in all these projects
that are happening.