Grace Glueck, a journalist who broke new ground by making the art world a distinct beat at The New York Times, and who then helped bring an important sex-discrimination lawsuit against the paper, her employer of more than 60 years, died on Oct. 8 at her home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. She was 96.

In more than 3,000 articles for The Times, Ms. Glueck approached art as a reporter more than as a critic, effectively inventing the art beat at the newspaper and inspiring other newsrooms across the country to make it a journalistic standard, The Times said.

Her news articles, interviews and profiles, filled with revelatory fact and often laced with wit, became a staple of the paper’s coverage of the visual arts in New York during the 1960s and 1970s, simultaneously during the rise of the feminist movement. She helped initiate a 1974 lawsuit that accused the paper of underpayment and under-promotion of women, based on her experience when she began there as a recent English-major graduate. Her tasks were clerical, and only because Lester Markel, the paper’s Sunday editor, took notice of her work was she able to train as a reporter. The lawsuit was settled in 1978 with The Times agreeing to consider more women for top management.