The city of Indianapolis and private-sector players are lining up behind an effort to rebrand the Central Canal Towpath as an art-themed destination dubbed Art 2 Art by adding artwork and improving the trail.

The Central Indiana Community Foundation and Indianapolis Cultural Trail Inc. have pulled the plug on a controversial sculpture depicting a freed slave.

The joint effort between local architects and tourism officials allows residents and visitors to download self-guided audio tours of the city's major monuments, sports venues and public buildings.

Controversy has swirled around a piece of art commissioned for the Cultural Trail’s $2 million public art program. What ultimately happens to Fred Wilson’s “E Pluribus Unum” sculpture of a freed slave could alienate local African-Americans who oppose it or draw the scorn of national art critics.

Planning around the Conrad's valet parking operation posed the most challenging dilemma faced by organizers of the 8-mile Cultural Trail.

Indianapolis Cultural Trail Inc. has hired its first executive director, Karen Haley, who was also the first director of the city’s Office of Sustainability.

The latest piece of art to be installed along downtown Indianapolis’ Cultural Trail will cost almost as much as the first eight displays combined.

The Chicago-based Joyce Foundation has granted $50,000 to support the Central Indiana Community Foundation’s ongoing outreach efforts surrounding the controversial sculpture.

A downtown advocate who renovated and repopulated a commercial building on what was once a desolate stretch of Massachusetts Avenue hopes to do the same on Virginia Avenue, where he just closed on the purchase of three contiguous commercial buildings totaling 15,000 square feet.

The Indianapolis Cultural Trail being built through the heart of downtown will include sculptural gardens dedicated to Martin Luther King Jr. and Abraham Lincoln, an extension of the $2 million Glick Peace Walk.

The two-story industrial building along the Indianapolis Cultural Trail will be converted into a furniture store.

A new not-for-profit organization will try to raise more than $700,000 a year for the trail’s ongoing maintenance, and it will market the trail as a tourism and economic-development engine.

Too few of the city's revitalization projects are connected by attractive sidewalks, streets, gardens and plazas.

If the idea of building a $50 million, 7-1/2-mile pedestrian and biking trail through the streets of downtown Indianapolis is indeed crazy, Brian Payne might be considered the Indianapolis Cultural trail's mad scientist. His leadership, persistence and passion for the project are the key reasons the first leg of the trail is due to open this month along Alabama Street.