The 86th Street Station
Instead of her own work, artist Nitza Tufiño created "Westside Views" with local teenagers for a lasting subway collaboration
Two Hasidic men push pink baby strollers in front of a Chinese restaurant; two old people walk slowly toward an M104 bus; straphangers silently step aboard a red No. 2 express train at the 96th Street station. These are not the masterpieces associated with the Chuck Close portraits across town on the ever-developing Second Avenue line or Lichtenstein’s porcelain-enamel mural about five steps south at 42nd street. Still, Westside Views (1989), 37 ceramic murals envisioned by artist Nitza Tufiño and 17 students from the Grosvenor Community House, have just as much staying power as much of the other works for the MTA’s Arts & Design program.
With $205,000 in amenity financing provided by a high-rise condo developer, Tufiño, back then a 40-year-old Puerto Rican ceramic muralist and daughter painter, Rafael Tufiño, dispatched GED students from Grosvenor House with 35-millimeter cameras, throughout the neighborhood to capture images of landmarks and typical urban scenes. They made the best scenes into slides, which Tufiño projected onto a wall, and students transferred onto 23-by-30-inch linoleum sheets then stamped onto large sheets of clay. Once cut into pieces, the scenes were fitted into kilns and fired, then painted with colored glaze and mounted onto large frames around 86th Street. Each of the participants made $4-an-hour for their work.
While some of the subway art elsewhere might fetch more attention and money if removed, the community art project marked a turning point in many students’ lives and left a lasting impression. “When I see it now, I see all the love that I put in that work,” Leeama Scott, a young immigrant from Trinidad, told the New York Times in 2009. Many of the then teenagers have left the Upper West Side and even New York City altogether. But many stayed and eventually became the subjects they once created: the parent playing in the park, the commuters boarding the trains, the patrons of the local park benches, teachers, community organizers and others. “As an artist, if I take my brushes and my skills and I invest in the lives of young people, then others can see what is possible … I believe human beings can do anything, if we find something that would positively influence them..” Tufiño has said of the work.
Tufiño, who was born and raised in Mexico, went on to create multiple ceramic installations for the city, including work for El Museo del Barrio, the country’s pre-eminent repository for 800 years of Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino art, as well as additional ceramics for the subway. At nearly 75, Tufiño still paints, draws, makes prints and engages with the New York community.
A Guide to the art of all 400 stations of the New York City subway:
From 2018 through 2021, I stopped off at 400+ stations of the New York City subway, took photographs of the public art there and researched the origin of the art, first for Instagram, then for Substack, for a 2023 Spectator article and now, hopefully, for a book and an app. My Go Fund Me is raising money to not only keep good journalism going, but also to create a prototype book, followed by an app. A book proposal 840 Miles: A People’s Guide to the Art of the New York City Subway is also currently available. You can also support my work by buying my photographs or my greeting cards on my Shopify store.
