The Carnegie Center for Art and History is a local history museum and contemporary art gallery. The Center offers visitors the opportunity to enjoy art works in a variety of media and to learn more about the process of creative expression through a range of exhibitions and programs for all ages.

The Carnegie Center is host to an annual fiber exhibition Form, Not Function: Quilt Art At The Carnegie. This juried exhibition explores the world of contemporary art quilts and features the work of fiber artists from across the United States.

The Carnegie Center is also home to three permanent history exhibits. Grandpa Makes a Scene: The Yenawine Dioramas, is a favorite among visitors young and old alike. This collection of hand-carved, fully mechanized dioramas features creator Merle Yenawine’s recollection of growing up in the rural community of Georgetown, Indiana at the turn of the last century. Visitors can enjoy the intricately detailed and often humorous scenes of the town carnival, one-room schoolhouse and more.

The award-winning exhibit Ordinary People, Extraordinary Courage: Men and Women of the Underground Railroad is a multimedia experience of discovery that invites visitors to explore the people and places of antebellum New Albany and Louisville, Kentucky. Explore the actual lives of two groups of people living in this borderland between the North and the South: the enslaved fugitives whose yearning for freedom compelled them to escape on a long trek filled with danger at every turn and the helpers, both black and white, whose selfless acts of courage assisted those on the run. This exhibition provides a compelling and comprehensive examination of the Underground Railroad in New Albany and beyond.

The exhibit Remembered: the Life of Lucy Higgs Nichols details this remarkable woman’s escape from slavery in 1862, and her service as a nurse with the 23rd Indiana Regiment during the Civil War, to her life in freedom in New Albany, Indiana as an admired citizen whose wartime service earned her a nurse’s pension by a Special Act of Congress in 1898.

A division of the New Albany-Floyd County Public Library, the Carnegie Center is also very family-oriented and offers its popular Family Fun Workshops on the second Saturday of every month. Adults and children work together to complete an art activity related to the current exhibit or holiday at this free, drop-in workshop. The Carnegie Center offers educational opportunities for all ages with regular talks and programs for adults, including the Lunch & Learn brown bag lunch series on the third Tuesday of every month.