Gisela "Gigi" Bialik Huberman passed away two days ago in her home in Sarasota, Florida, where she and her husband Ben had relocated after decades of living in the DC area.Gigi Huberman was not only a great supporter of the local DC area art scene, but also a GREAT supporter of DC area artists, and a power force whose footprint upon our region's art and artists will last for years to come.
Gigi's enthusiasm for art, artists, and people was not only contagious, but also the kind of enthusiasm that came from a deep well of goodness and power achieved from an extraordinary life of hard work, immense accomplishment, and remarkable success.
I first met Gigi and her husband Ben in 2009 at an art fair in Miami during Art Basel Miami Beach's week of art fairs in the greater Miami area.
They bought a gorgeous work by Michael Janis titled "Cubans Dreaming of Liberty", and that night I delivered the piece to their home on Fisher Island, which meant driving to the ferry point and getting a spectacular view of the Miami skyline in a full moon, arriving at Fisher Island and visiting their home.
Inside there was a massive treasure of an art collection, including one of the largest and best Jose Bedia's paintings that I have ever seen, in good company with Miro, Picasso, many Latin American artists, and a surprising number of DC area artists, thus revealing the couple's DC roots. I saw work by DC area artists Yuriko Yamaguchi, Rick Wall, Carol Goldberg, Sam Gilliam, and several others whose names escapes me now.
She also had dinner waiting for me... so sweet for someone whom I had just met a few hours before, and an early sign of what sort of special human being this lady was.
Soon after that our friendship deepened back in the DC area, fueled by many things in common, such as the fact that her husband Ben, like me, was a Cuban-born immigrant who came to the US as a child, and like me, was a former US Navy officer.
The Gigi and Ben Huberman love story, related to my wife and I one night over dinner at Hunter's Inn, is another example and memory that I hold in a special place.
Gigi was born in Mexico City, and studied in the US at UC Berkeley. While she was there, she was introduced via letters, to Ben Huberman, then a young Navy officer working in the Navy's submarine program, or "Nukes" as we called them in the Navy, and where the brightest and smartest Navy officers were hand-picked by Admiral Hyman G. Rickover.
"We wrote tons of letters before we met - for six months!", noted Gigi. When they finally met in person, their letters became the fuel for love and they were married three months later.
Later in life, now a DC area family, Gigi got a Masters and then a PhD at George Washington University, eventually became a linguistics professor at American University. Within a few years, this powerhouse of a woman was the Chairman of America University's Languages Department.
While we were talking over dinner, Gigi mentioned one of her son's name, and my wife's eyes widened.
"Jonny Huberman?", my wife repeated the name, but as a question... "the Jonny Huberman who lived on Lilly Stone Drive?," she asked, mentioning the street where she had lived with her parents as a young girl.
At the end, to everyone's delight, they re-discovered that the Hubermans and Andersons had been neighbors for years, and my father in law had been his own sons and their sons' coach! Another amazing coincidence, or a glitch in the Matrix - not only that, but around the date of that dinner were also the beginnings of my wife's own employment as a (then) Assistant Professor at American University, where years later Gigi played a key and positive role in her career.
Somewhere along the timeline of this power force, she decided to go to law school and became a lawyer, and then focused on communications law, which (naturally) led to a focus on the radio industry itself and before long she and Ben were the owner of a struggling radio station (the first one of which, as I recall was bought at an auction, as the station was going bankrupt!). One radio station became, two, and soon there were 13 of them!
This number pushed the then FCC establish rule for multiple ownership of radio stations, which led to the "Huberman Rule" allowing one group to own multiple stations in one market.
Another example that stands in my memory about this spectacular human being also happened during an art fair in Miami. I was relating to her about how my assistant at the time, a wonderful artist and amazing hard-worker who helped me for years to do the Art Basel Art fairs, was leaving and heading out to Postgraduate school.
Gigi's going away present to her? She bought ALL of her work at the booth that year as a sending away present.
The radiance of her energy reached out widely - most recently she served as President of the James Renwick Alliance, hosted dozens of artists in her former spectacular home, helping them connect with collectors and galleries, and when she moved permanently to Sarasota, she immediately became involved with the Asolo Repertory Theatre there.
Somewhere along that cyclonic life, she also found the time to author three books! Starting with the groundbreaking "Mil obras de Lingüística española e Hispanoamericana. Un ensayo de síntesis crítica" and then two best-selling mysteries!
No one could stop Gigi when she put her focus on something - nearly everything that she touched flourished and was better at the end of it.
That includes my family and I.
We send our love to Gigi and Ben and their family.
Abrazos y amor -- el universo ha perdido una de sus mas brillantes estrellas.
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