Celebrating the Life & Legacy of Leah Chase: Portraits by Gustave Blache III Return Home

New Orleans, LA, December 26, 2019 --(PR.com)-- On view at Dooky Chase Restaurant

Opening Reception: Monday, January 6, 2020, 6-8 PM, $100 contribution to attend, benefiting the Edgar “Dooky” Jr. and Leah Chase Foundation. The opening reception is in conjunction with an evening celebrating the life and legacy of Leah Chase's contributions to community through service.

Dooky Chase Restaurant
2301 Orleans Ave.
New Orleans, LA 70119

Leah Chase: Paintings by Gustave Blache III will be featured at this opening reception on January 6th, kicking off an exhibition remembering and celebrating the life and legacy of Leah's contributions at Dooky Chase Restaurant. With an opening celebration on January 6, this collection of portraits of the renowned chef by artist Gustave Blache III will remain on view through April 2020. Dooky Chase, in conjunction with Richard Colton Jr. and artist Gustave Blache III, are proud to bring back this groundbreaking series for the public. Originally shown in 2012 at the New Orleans Museum of Art, the 20-piece series by Blache captures the candid moments of Chef Chase in the kitchen with her as she worked to pour oysters, chop scallions, stir gumbo and review inventory lists with staff. Dooky Chase is happy to announce that 14 of the 20 paintings in this series will be on view at the restaurant, marking the largest gathering of these paintings since the inaugural exhibition at NOMA in 2012, and ANTE. Mag is proud to feature this groundbreaking exhibit in honor of the legacy of this legendary chef, activist and arts patron.

Founded in 1941, Dooky Chase has been a landmark restaurant in the Treme neighborhood in New Orleans. Renowned for its creole cuisine, Dooky Chase also served as a meeting place for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Thurgood Marshall, A.P. Tureaud, the Freedom Riders, and other activists who planned protests and boycotts during the Civil Rights Movement. Spearheaded by the culinary efforts of Chef Chase, Dooky Chase still continues to be a paramount establishment for Creole cuisine. Leah Chase, a long time patron of the arts, passed away June 1st, 2019 at the age of 96. The reuniting of the works from this series is in honor of Chef Chase’s life and legacy that was devoted to community and to the service of others.

Gustave Blache III is an artist whose his practice celebrates visual journalism and themes related to labor. He was raised in New Orleans, LA and resides in Brooklyn, NY. An alum of the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA) and the School of Visual Arts (SVA), his paintings are held in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery and the National Museum of African American History and Culture, among other museum collections. Blache currently has the painting, “End of Day,” from the Leah Chase series, on view in Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art’s (MASS MoCA) exhibition “Still I Rise” through the summer 2020.