Art collector and Contemporary Arts Center backer Luba Glade dies at age 87 Times Picayune 11-27-2009 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ************************************************ Luba Glade, an outspoken woman who used her passion for art to become a powerful force in New Orleans’ art community as a gallery owner, critic and collector, died Thursday at Poydras Home of lymphoma. She was 87. A lifelong New Orleanian who graduated from Newcomb College, Ms. Glade ran the Glade Gallery in the 1960s, wrote art criticism for The States-Item in the 1970s and was a catalyst in the establishment of the Contemporary Arts Center. The idea for that building was born in the summer of 1976 at Robert Tannen and Jim Lalande’s exhibit of avant-garde art in an un-air-conditioned warehouse in the 9th Ward. “This is great,” Ms. Glade wrote. “We should have something like this on a permanent basis.” Ms. Glade was in a group that approached Sydney Besthoff about donating a building at 900 Camp St. — a warehouse for his local drugstore chain. The center opened that fall with exhibits that included Fats Domino’s pink Cadillac. “Her biggest pride was her involvement in the CAC,” her son Louis Glade said. “She didn’t have gobs of money, but when somebody needed a push, she wrote the article saying we really needed a CAC.” A fixture at art openings, frequently wearing outsize jewelry she had bought on trips to exotic destinations, Ms. Glade could be counted on to make a splash, whether it was through a vice squad raid in 1967 that shut down an exhibit at her French Quarter gallery, or in a column when she told the principal backer of the blockbuster “Treasures of Tutankhamun” exhibit to stop taking himself so seriously. She got into trouble with the law over two pieces by Shirley Reznikoff, a Baton Rouge artist, that resembled a “peep show,” said Lt. Frederick Soule, the vice squad’s commander. The police seized the art and returned it, and the show closed before a decision could be reached on whether the pieces might be obscene. Throughout her life, Ms. Glade had a knack for sizing up art and determining what was — or would become — important, Louis Glade said. “When the Whitney Museum came down to do a Southern art show, they came to Mom’s gallery to see what she was showing.” Ms. Glade also was a mentor to young artists, including Arthur Roger and Josh Pailet, who run their own galleries. Along the way, Ms. Glade collected art, buying what her son called “minor pieces by major artists.” “She bought small pieces that reminded her of big pieces,” he said. She brought her art with her when she moved from her house into an apartment, where art covered every space. “Furniture was not the problem,” she said in a 1990 interview, “but I wanted to bring my art pieces.” She kept going to openings. “If I’m alone, I know I’ll always see lot of acquaintances — and lots of interesting strangers,” she said in a 1998 interview. “They’re just as diverse as the art.” When she showed up, “everyone would come rushing to the door because she was walking in,” Louis Glade said. “The love she got when she went to art galleries was overwhelming.” In addition to her son Louis, survivors include two more sons, Jan and Leonard Glade; a daughter, Suzanne Glade of Chicago; two sisters, Leona Bersadsky and Shirley Goldman; 13 grandchildren; and a great-grandchild. A funeral will be held Sunday at 11 a.m. at Tharp-Sontheimer Funeral Home, 1600 N. Causeway Blvd. in Metairie. Visitation will start at 10 a.m. Burial will be in Hebrew Rest Cemetery No. 3.