Grace Glueck, a transformative writer who broke caller crushed by making the creation satellite a chiseled bushed astatine The New York Times, and who past helped bring an important sex-discrimination suit against the paper, her leader of much than 60 years, died connected Saturday astatine her location connected the Upper West Side of Manhattan. She was 96.

Her stepdaughter Susan Freudenheim confirmed the death.

In much than 3,000 crisply written, sometimes contentious articles for The Times, Ms. Glueck (pronounced gluck) approached creation arsenic a newsman alternatively than arsenic a critic, efficaciously inventing the creation bushed astatine the paper and inspiring different newsrooms crossed the region to marque it a journalistic standard.

Her quality articles, interviews and profiles, filled with revelatory information and often laced with wit, became a staple of the paper’s sum of the ocular arts successful New York during the 1960s and ’70s successful particular, a fertile and tumultuous play successful which she began uncovering fractures successful the glamorous achromatic container of that creation world.

Ms. Glueck “applied the techniques of governmental investigative journalism to the little-examined creation world” and “was parent of america all,” the creation writer Lee Rosenbaum wrote successful 2021 connected the blog CultureGrrl.

Barbara Isenberg, who was penning for The Los Angeles Times during Ms. Glueck’s era, said past twelvemonth successful a telephone interrogation for this obituary: “Suddenly successful the 1960s determination was a batch of money, and the arts took off. Other radical astir the state began to constitute successful the 1970s and ’80s, but Grace was ever the premier writer covering the news.”

That quality included an intensifying feminist question that had reached the creation satellite arsenic good arsenic the Times newsroom itself, wherever Ms. Glueck was inspired to assistance initiate a 1974 suit against the paper, accusing it of chronic underpayment and under-promotion of women. She had experienced it firsthand erstwhile she began moving for the insubstantial much than 2 decades earlier.

As a caller English-major postgraduate of New York University, Ms. Glueck started astatine The Times successful 1951 arsenic a transcript miss with fewer prospects of a viable journalistic future. At the time, newspapermen were known to telephone women successful the newsroom “skirts” and “gals.” A antheral who had interviewed her erstwhile she applied for the occupation had written “attractive brunette” connected her evaluation. When she aboriginal asked astir trying retired for a writer’s job, a elder exertion told her, “Why don’t you spell location and get married?”

“I was not allowed to bid arsenic a newsman due to the fact that I was a woman,” she said successful an oral past program for the Museum of Modern Art successful New York successful 1997.

For 2 years Ms. Glueck performed clerical tasks earlier landing astatine The New York Times Book Review arsenic a representation researcher, pairing artworks with reviews, a occupation she would clasp for 11 years arsenic her vocation stalled.

Her fortunes changed successful 1963 erstwhile she recovered an representation of a nymphet by Balthus to travel a reappraisal of Vladimir Nabokov’s caller “Lolita.” The pairing attracted the attraction of Lester Markel, the paper’s Sunday editor, and helium asked to conscionable Ms. Glueck.

“I walked into his enormous, Mussolini-like office,” she said successful the oral history, “he gets up from his desk, helium brushes his hands implicit my lips and said, ‘You person excessively overmuch lipstick on.’”

There had been creation disapproval successful The Times but small creation journalism, and it was Mr. Markel’s thought to enlist her to constitute a Sunday creation column, “Art People,” a postulation of short, chatty takes connected creation events and personalities.

“It was overmuch looked down connected by what you mightiness telephone superior artists and critics,” Ms. Glueck said, “but successful the extremity I deliberation they recovered it a root of news.”

The file evolved to see superior interviews and hard reporting. “It was truly thing I wanted to marque it,” she said. And it caught the attraction of the arts editors for the regular paper.

Soon aft starting “Art People,” Ms. Glueck was doubling arsenic a columnist and an arts reporter, splitting her clip betwixt the Sunday section, whose bureau was connected the sixth level of the Times office connected West 43rd Street successful Manhattan, and the regular quality cognition connected the 3rd floor.

Agnes Gund, the New York arts patron, collector and a erstwhile president of MoMA, said of Ms. Glueck successful a telephone interrogation successful 2021: “She was not acrophobic to talk her caput oregon study the truth. In a way, she precise overmuch shaped the creation satellite arsenic we cognize it today, surely successful New York.”

That creation satellite past was rapidly changing. The loft question opened up SoHo, inflating the standard of coating itself — arsenic good arsenic existent property values successful that once-industrial Manhattan neighborhood. Record prices astatine the auction houses raised questions astir artists’ royalties connected resold art. Pop Art, similar Andy Warhol’s Campbell Soup cans and Brillo boxes, demanded file inches successful the newspapers, arsenic did the caller waves of Op Art and Happenings. Corporate backing was transforming formerly intimate museums. The National Endowment for the Arts, established by Congress successful 1965, was dispersing ample sums each implicit the country.

Crisply dressed successful tailored jackets, with a short, no-nonsense haircut and pedaling to appointments connected her bicycle, Ms. Glueck became a predominant beingness astatine galleries and artists’ studios. Drawing connected her literate education, she wrote “naturalistically,” she said, mounting an creator successful the situation of a assemblage oregon workplace successful verbal portraits that were tactile successful their item and affable successful their intimacy.

The evident effortlessness of her pieces, on with flashes of what Ms. Isenberg called “a wicked consciousness of humor,” was deceptive. “She bleeds erstwhile she writes, and rewrites, and rewrites,” the Times newsman Nan Robertson wrote successful “The Girls successful the Balcony,” her 1992 publication that chronicled the combat for workplace parity by women astatine the paper.

Recounting an interrogation with Marcel Duchamp successful 1965, Ms. Glueck wrote that helium had “brushed a manus implicit his longish hair” and that “lean, lively and jauntily clad successful corduroys and suede shoes, helium looked not astatine each similar a fig from Art History.” She captured his wry humor, quoting him arsenic saying: “That’s the occupation with artists now. In my day, we wanted to beryllium outcasts, pariahs. They person state houses, 2 cars, 3 divorces and 5 children. An creator has to crook retired tons of paintings to wage for each that, hmm?”

In 1 of her galore profiles of pistillate artists, Ms. Glueck quoted Georgia O’Keeffe musing successful a 1970 interrogation astir her wide photographed profile, “It would beryllium unspeakable if I got a treble chin.”

Ms. Glueck observed successful her MoMA oral history: “If I had known these radical each my life, if I had been overimpressed with them, successful awe of them,” past “I mightiness not person been capable to person taken the aforesaid breezy presumption of them that I did.”

Soon creation reviews were added to her assignments. Philip Pearlstein, the New York figurative painter, said successful a telephone interview: “Unlike different critics, she was inquisitive, asked questions, got wrong the minds of artists, and wrote astir their intentions alternatively than her ain reactions.”

Ms. Glueck often covered what The Times had missed. “The Times’s starring critics had agelong disparaged the American avant-garde, and Grace brought caller aerial to its creation pages,” said Elizabeth Baker, a erstwhile longtime exertion of Art successful America.

But however The Times treated women remained an contented for Ms. Glueck, and successful 1969, erstwhile its publisher, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, posted a memo successful the newsroom announcing promotions to apical editorial positions, she instantly work betwixt the lines: Women were conspicuously absent. She fired disconnected a polite but pointed enactment to Mr. Sulzberger, concluding: “Why were nary women included?”

Her missive was a changeable fired crossed the bow successful what would go a protracted class-action suit against The Times, filed successful 1974 by pistillate employees who accused the institution of enactment favoritism successful usurpation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The fiscal newsman Eileen Shanahan, the astir salient of the 8 plaintiffs who officially filed the lawsuit, said, “Without Grace determination would person been nary lawsuit.”

A newsroom women’s caucus, formed successful 1972, had pored implicit the rolls kept by the Newspaper Guild, the national that represented nonmanagement employees, and recovered patterns of unequal wage and unequal promotion. The “attractive brunette” remark from Ms. Glueck’s archetypal interrogation itself became evidence. The caucus demanded an affirmative enactment program for women.

In precocious 1972, arsenic the caucus gained spot and momentum, Ms. Glueck was promoted to taste quality exertion of the regular paper. John Canaday, past The Times’s main creation critic, wrote of her successful the paper’s in-house newsletter, Times Talk: “Since she went connected the Women’s Lib kick, she objects to having attraction called to her beauteous ankles and agelong eyelashes, paramount among her different attractions, but wherever other tin you begin?”

He past proceeded to her skills: “Grace tin excavation retired a communicative with the unit of a operation unit dynamiting for a caller subway and the precision of a dentist exploring a cavity successful a movie star’s beforehand tooth.”

But Ms. Glueck recovered that she didn’t similar her caller occupation arsenic editor, a nonwriting position, and stepped down to instrumentality to her trusty bicycle and beloved creation beat.

The suit led to a tribunal colony successful 1978 successful which some sides claimed victory. The Times did not assistance raises, marque contiguous promotions oregon substantially alteration its voluntary affirmative-action program. But the institution agreed to spot much women successful jobs ranging from introduction level to apical management, and to make annuities covering costs of “delayed vocation advancement oregon denied opportunity.”

“Grace lit the fire,” said Mary Marshall Clark, who worked astatine The Times arsenic an oral historiographer earlier becoming manager of the Center for Oral History Research astatine Columbia University, “It was the astir important sex-discrimination suit successful American journalism.”

In 2000, she joined a chap Times alumnus, Milt Freudenheim, a concern and fiscal reporter. He died successful January at property 94. In summation to her stepdaughter Ms. Freudenheim, Ms. Glueck is survived by different stepdaughter, Jo Freudenheim; 2 stepsons, Jack and Tom Freudenheim; and 5 step-grandchildren.

Ms. Glueck retired from The Times successful 1991, the aforesaid twelvemonth her publication “Brooklyn: People and Places, Past and Present,” written with Paul Gardner, a erstwhile Times arts editor, was published. She besides wrote “The Painted City” (1992), a publication astir New York arsenic depicted by artists.

She past wrote concisely for the play The New York Observer earlier returning to The Times done the aboriginal 2010s.

Reflecting connected her vocation astatine The Times successful the MoMA oral history, Ms. Glueck acknowledged ruefully that earlier she became progressive successful the lawsuit, she had go inordinately wedded to the paper, and that tying her individuality to it truthful intimately had exacted a price.

“I liked moving that hard,” she said. “It became my full life, the paper, arsenic it did for a batch of people. I couldn’t ideate an beingness isolated from it, which is unfortunate. So I didn’t complain. Or, if I complained, cipher took it seriously, including me.”