Nilda Mercedes Peraza is a cultural professional with over thirty-five years of experience in arts and museum management in both New York City and Puerto Rico

Early Years & Cayman Gallery

Nilda Peraza’s career in the arts began in 1971 after she relocated from Puerto Rico to New York. Her first incursion in the arts was as an assistant to retired U.S. Congressman José Serrano at the Bilingual Performing Art Center in School District #7 in the Bronx, which offered instruction paired with diverse programs to enrich the community.

During this time, she volunteered at the Society of Friends of Puerto Rico, a New York City-based cultural and educational organization founded in 1956 by Mariano Guerrero.

In the mid-1970s, the Society of Friends of Puerto Rico was re-branded into the Cayman Gallery by Jack Agueros, a well-known playwright, poet and writer; George Aguirre; and Nilda Peraza. Cayman Gallery opened in 1976, becoming the first and only exhibition space in the SoHo neighborhood dedicated solely to under-represented and marginalized Puerto Rican artists, both emerging or established.  

Jack Agueros served as director of Cayman Gallery for two years. After his departure in 1977, Peraza became director. Her vision was to positively impact the arts landscape by opening Cayman’s doors to artists from Latin America both residing in the United States and abroad, as a means to initiate and expand the dialogue about inclusion and diversity.

During her tenure, she facilitated the exhibitions of over 300 artists. Amid the rise of multiculturalism in the arts, Peraza was instrumental in introducing and broadening the career of many Puerto Rican and Latino artists and art professionals, as well as building positive collaborations with various cultural and artistic groups.

In 1982, she was selected to take part at the Museum Management Institute “MMI”, now the Getty Leadership Institute, as the first Puerto Rican to attend.  In 2001, Nilda would enroll in the Museum Management Certificate program at the University of Colorado at Boulder.  These opportunities offered the tangible knowledge to manage cultural organizations, mainly museums.

Museum of Contemporary Hispanic Art

Eventually, Peraza later made the bold decision to transform Cayman Gallery into a more comprehensive organization where she would be instrumental in introducing and broadening the career of many Hispanic & Latin American artists and art professionals.

The Museum of Contemporary Hispanic Art opened in 1985, in the East SoHo neighborhood, a cutting-edge arts zone at the time. The Museum of Contemporary Hispanic Art, or MoCHA, was committed to becoming the focal point for artistic and aesthetic accomplishments of Hispanic creative communities within the U.S. During its years of operation, they showcased exhibitions with themes addressing issues of social relevance and engaged the public in a visual dialogue.

During a six-year period under Nilda’s direction, many artists, curators, and critics careers were represented. Many art history students chose MoCHA as their internship location to have the opportunity to work with Peraza, whom many considered a unique mentor. Her passionate and professional disposition paired with her skills and experience was a factor in developing and motivating art professionals to successfully achieve their career goals.

The Decade Show & Other Projects

Nilda has lectured widely on many aspects of Latin American Art and several artists—including Alfredo Jaar, Ismael Frigerio, Elba Damast, Elizam Escobar, Maestro Fran Cervoni and Nick Quijano, to name a few. She has curated exhibitions that have been praised nationally and internationally—including New Directions: Mexican Women Artists (a collaboration between Cayman Gallery and the Organization of American States). She was co-curator of Art and Ideology exhibition at the New Museum of Contemporary Art NYC, Colombian Artists in the USA in cooperation with the Centro Colombo Americano in Bogota, Colombia and Visions of Latin America in collaboration with the Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas, Venezuela.

In 1988, she approached Marcia Tucker Director of The New Museum to engage in a collaborative endeavor and together with Kinshasha Holman Conwill of the Studio Museum in Harlem took part in a noteworthy collaboration that would bring to light the best works being produced by the artists represented by each of these institutions. The project was titled,The Decade Show: Frameworks of Identities. It was considered a blockbuster exhibition that offered a thematic review of the 1980s.

In 1989, Peraza developed the concept, made a preliminary selection of artists, and wrote the proposal for and exhibition titled “Hispanic Artists in the United States” submitted to the Department of the Interior to represent the United States in the 3rd International Biennial of Painting in Cuenca, Ecuador (1991). The proposal was granted and she designated Julia Herzberg to become its curator.

Return to Puerto Rico

In 1993, Peraza returned to Puerto Rico where she resided until 2003. During that time, she worked at the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture (ICP), first as Director for the Museum and Parks Program overseeing the collections, chain of pocket museums, the conservation laboratory, and initiations of exhibitions from the collections. After two years, she was promoted to the position of Special Assistant to Dr. Luis Díaz Hernández, Executive Director. In that capacity, she developed and implemented new programming Initiatives and projects that reflected the cultural & public policies of the Executive Director.

After another change of leadership at the Institute for Puerto Rican Culture, Dr. Josѐ Ramón de la Torre became the executive director, and she was designated to lead development and research to organize a project on the presence and contribution of African heritage to the formation of a Puerto Rican identity and culture. After months of research, Peraza presented a project, which was the creation of a museum that she named The Museum of Our African Roots.

After a brief stint in New York City and then the Pacific Northwest, Peraza settled in Central Florida, where she currently resides.

Chronology

1967: Graduates from the University of Puerto Rico with a BA in Education and an MA in Early Childhood Education.

1971: Moves to New York City.

1976: Cayman Gallery opens in SoHo.

1977: Becomes director of Cayman Gallery.

1982: First Puerto Rican to attend to the Museum Management Institute (MMI), now known as the Getty Leadership Institute.

1985: The Museum of Contemporary Hispanic Art (MoCHA) opens in SoHo with Nilda as founding director.

1990: The Decade Show opens at MoCHA, New Museum, and the Studio Museum.

1991: A proposal by Nilda sends a delegation of artists to represent the United States at the 3rd International Biennial of Painting in Cuenca, Ecuador.

1993: After the closure of MoCHA, returns to Puerto Rico and works at the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña (ICP).

2001: Enrolls in the Museum Management Certificate Program at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Selected Interviews & Media

–Caragol, Taína B. “Archives of Reality: Contemporary Efforts to Document Latino Art.” : American Art , Vol. 19, No. 3 (Fall 2005), pp. 2-8.

–Chang, Jeff. Who We Be: A Cultural History of Race in Post-Civil Rights America. MacMillan Books. 2016.  

–Durón, Maximiliano. “In a New Book, Scholar Arlene Dávila Writes About the Invisibility of Latinx Art in the Market.” ArtNews. September 16, 2020. 

“MoCHA was such an important space. “The Museum of Contemporary Hispanic Art”—think about that for a moment, how visionary that was, even though we were using the lingo of “Hispanic.” The idea of a contemporary Latinx art space was revolutionary, and it was there that I got to meet artists Juan Sanchez, Amalia Mesa-Bains, Coco Fusco. It was also at a moment, in the 1990s, of this so-called Latin art boom that led to the development and consolidation of the Latin American art market.” -Arlene Dávila

–New York Times: “The Many Accents of Latino Art” (September 25, 1988) by Grace Glueck

''We have not really assimilated to the American way of life; rather, we have a parallel culture and institutions. We've kept what's good about us and added our experience of the United States. I've seen artists go into the mainstream and lose themselves.'' -Nilda Peraza

–Chicago Tribune: “Hispanic Art, In All Its Sizzling Variety” (December 4, 1988) by Judy Hevrdejs

''An Hispanic artist is one who has had many years of experience in this country, his career has evolved in this country and reflects a mix of traditional, cultural and religious beliefs with those he has experienced. What comes out of this mixture is Hispanic art, transpired in many styles but unified by a language.'' -Nilda Peraza

–Ramirez, Yasmin. A Companion to Modern and Contemporary Latin American and Latina/o Art. “‘…A place for us’: The Puerto Rican Alternative Arts Space Movement in New York.” Wiley. 2021. 

“We were working on a parallel level with spaces like El Museo del Barrio. We knew that El Museo del Barrio had a mission to serve that particular community and we did not need to duplicate that. Basically we went another route and decided to infiltrate the mainstream in SoHo. We opened our doors to the Latin American community because those artists could not get shows at other galleries and they were coming to us” (Peraza 2001).