Nitza Tufiño, born in 1949 to Mexican and Puerto Rican parents, spent her childhood living in Puerto Rico, New York City, and Mexico. When she moved to New York in 1969, she became involved in establishing El Museo del Barrio, where she created the original façade artwork. Around the same time, she worked as a consultant on Puerto Rican and Caribbean art for both the Brooklyn Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, helping to elevate Latino artists into the mainstream art world.
Tufiño also co-founded El Taller Boricua, a collective of Puerto Rican artists, and served as the master printmaker and director of the Rafael Tufiño Printmaking Workshop. As a board member of Friends of Puerto Rico, she opened the Cayman Gallery in SoHo, which later became the Museum of Contemporary Hispanic Art (MOCHA).
In this passage, Tufiño reflects on how her upbringing in Puerto Rico, surrounded by artists and intellectuals, shaped her later involvement in art and activism.
