A Taste for Art
and History
The Carnegie Center for Art and History will hold
a major fundraising event for its 2017 public art
project, the skatepark along the river in downtown
New Albany.
The event will be held Sept. 8 at 6 p.m. at the
Calumet Club, 1614 E. Spring St. in New Albany.
It will include food, wine and bourbon tastes, as
well as silent and live auctions and raffles.
Tickets are $65 for members of the center, $75
for non-members. They can be purchased at
812.944.7336 or through a link on the center’s web
site, www.carnegiecenter.org/taste.
#IamPublicArt
This year’s 2017 #IamPublicArt event will be the
Carnegie Center’s opportunity to call attention to its
planned new public art project, a new and much-
improved skatepark on the New Albany riverfront.
The event will be on Sept. 23 from 6 to 10 p.m. at
the New Albany Riverfront Amphitheater.
It will include three pop-up art installations
created by teams of professors and students from
Indiana University Southeast, Bellarmine University
and Kentucky College of Art + Design.
There will also be a musical program put together
by Louisville artist Jecorey “1200” Arthur and headed
by the National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master
(and New Albany resident) Jamey Aebersold.
And there will be food and drink available from
local vendors.
The event is free and open to the public. But a
free fundraiser?
“We’re hoping to build awareness for the project,”
said Daniel Pfalzgraf, curator for the Carnegie
Center. “Especially because this year’s event will
be in the amphiteater right in that area, right next
door to the skatepark.”
said Pfalzgraf, “the features were never done
correctly. It was always difficult to use, even
when new. There are seams in the concrete
and angles that don’t make sense. And now
age is wearing it down.”
The parent of a skater, Pfalzgraf feels it would
be utilized more by New Albany’s youths with
better-constructed features. And the museum
curator sees it as “a skateable work of public
art” in a key part of the city – on the waterfront,
next to the amphitheater.
“Internally, we’ve been calling it the Public
Art Skatepark,” Pfalzgraf said, “but another
possibility is the New Albany Flow Park
because it runs along the flow of the Ohio
River, which echoes the flow of the skaters.”
It would also be a haven for biking, hiking,
dog walking and children running around.
The goal is to raise $300,000, which the
Center hopes to accomplish with two events
this fall. One is to raise money; the other is to
raise awareness.
“I think the whole thing is difficult for
some people to wrap their heads around,”
Pfalzgraf said. “They may see it as just another
playground. But we have some preliminary
sketches, which we’ll release to the public
soon. And I think that might inspire some of
those people.”
One who is already inspired is New Albany
Mayor Jeff Gahan, “who absolutely loves
the idea and is behind it 100 percent,” said
Pfalzgraf. “In fact, we found out that the city
had plans to demolish the park because it’s in
such disrepair and gets so little use. But after
the mayor saw our drawings and renderings,
he cancelled those plans.”
There’s a major redevelopment of the
riverfront in the works, spurred by a $5 million
award from Horseshoe Casino. “The plan
is for boat docks, riverfront restaurant and
some upscale camping sites,” said Pfalzgraf.
“To include the skatepark as part of that says
a lot about their trust in us and our ability to
create something special.”