Home » Centrovoices » Arts Culture » Arts & Culture

Arts & Culture

HOMENAJE: A Tribute to Victor Hernández Cruz
I get an urgent message from poet Dr. Nancy Mercado that she is having dinner with the great American, Neo-Rican and Nuyorican poet Victor Hernández Cruz at Casa Adela in Loisaida with two other literary icons and that I better get my scrawny Puerto Rican ass down there, so I can photograph him for the HOMENAJE exhibit. Hurry, she texts. I forget where I was, but for the sake of this story, I had...
Beyond Walls: A Portrait of Muralist Maria Dominguez
New York City is often called one of the art capitals of the world, and it even shows on its very walls. Throughout the city, it is rare not to find a wall marker, sprayed, or painted upon. While one readily sees the illegible street artist’s name tagged on a wall, recently several stylized murals have started taking up new spaces through the city. Much attention has been taken way from a...
Claiming a History, Creating a Story: An Interview with Eleanor Parker Sapia Primary
There are stories that spread from parent to child; from mouth to ear; and from hand to paper. And then there are those stories that connect us beyond borders. These stories make up a narrative, which we keep like muscle memory or a scar, passing them on from generation to generation. For Puerto Ricans, the act of storytelling takes on significant importance given our nomadic nature, our...
Tiple Fever: Building a Forgotten Jíbaro Instrument
As I stare at the tiple and examine closely all of its details, its smooth wooden contour, a perfectly carved neck, the firm placement of its metal frets...I can’t believe I made it. The instrument has been with me a little over a month and whenever I strum those strings, I still find myself astounded by its sonority–especially now that I know what goes into making one. My first contact with this...
HOMENAJE: A Tribute to Carlos “Charlie” Díaz
“I’m just a simple community activist,” says Carlos “Charlie” Díaz. “I just want to show that we, as Puerto Ricans, contributed in a great way to life here.” Charlie may not give himself enough credit. He has decades of service in community development, public affairs, and hospital administration with work he has done with the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, Metropolitan Hospital, the...
Así Somos: Through A Puerto Rican Lens
Photography and storytelling go well together. Of course, we know an image can speak for itself, but sometimes a few words can go a long way to providing additional context. Projects like Humans of New York and the Everyday Series are evidence of this connection. People want to move beyond the surface and understand the lives of others from a more nuanced perspective. This is precisely what Ada...
Assembling Juan Sánchez: Profile of the Artist
As I leave the office, my bag is heavier than when I arrived because it now contains several exhibition booklets, a film on the life of Piri Thomas, and other materials. In short, homework. After 25 years of working as an art professor here at Hunter College, Juan Sánchez does not hesitate to offer these archival materials as parting gifts. In many ways, they reflect our conversation, two hours...
HOMENAJE: A Tribute to Nitza Tufiño
“In many ways, I was privileged growing up. I was always surrounded by artists,” begins Nitza Tufiño. Nitza’s father was the great Puerto Rican visual artist Rafael Tufiño, and her mother was a Mexican dancer and model. We are inside the ground floor of a Spanish Harlem brownstone that houses the Rafael Tufiño Printmaking workshop. Inside is a flurry of activity. I have walked into the Saturday...
Aires navideños: A 2015 playlist to get the parranda started
It’s that time of the year. Family and friends gather to talk, eat and share some drinks. At many family events the holiday music playlist is mandatory. In my family gatherings, the holiday playlist serves as a soundtrack to the multiple conversations among siblings. The sounds of the güiro , the cuatro and the trumpets competing with the tías catching up, children running around and with the...
HOMENAJE: An interview with the man behind it, Ricardo Muñiz
When Ricardo Muñiz contacted us about including his series of photos, Homenaje: A Traveling Homage to Our Puerto Rican Heroes , I was pleasantly in awe of how well he got both what Centro Voices is about and of how well his exquisite collection of photos fit with our commitment to sharing the story of the Puerto Rican Diaspora. In the past year, we’ve had the opportunity to share 12 images...

-->

Center for Puerto Rican Studies | Hunter College | 695 Park Ave | New York, NY 10065

c 2017 Center for Puerto Rican Studies | Privacy Policy | Disclaimer