Betty Parsons

American artist, art dealer, and collector

Betty Parsons (born Betty Bierne Pierson, January 31, 1900 – July 23, 1982) was an American artist, art dealer, and collector known for her early promotion of Abstract Expressionism. She is regarded as one of the most influential and dynamic figures of the American avant garde.

Betty Bierne Pierson was born on January 31, 1900, the second of three daughters. Although her parents disapproved, she soon began studying art in the studio of Gutzon Borglum, whom she described as a poor teacher. In 1919, Parsons married Schuyler Livingston Parsons, an affluent, New York City socialite ten years her senior. Her family hoped that Parsons would settle down into a conventional lifestyle, but the couple divorced in Paris, only three years later on the grounds of incompatibility, and as a result, her family disinherited Parsons remained in Paris and enrolled in the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, where she studied under the sculptors Émile Antoine Bourdelle (formerly an assistant to Auguste Rodin) and Ossip Zadkine. In the summers, she studied painting with Arthur Lindsey on the coast of Brittany. She bought a small house in Montparnasse where she lived with a British art student, Adge Baker, She would have nine more one woman shows at Midtown over the next twenty years.

Following her one woman show at the Midtown Galleries, owner Alan Bruskin offered Parsons her first gallery job: selling art on commission. In 1940, Parsons left Sullivan's gallery and took a position managing a contemporary gallery in the Wakefield Bookshop at 64 East 55th Street. This was her first job managing a gallery on her own; she had full curatorial control regarding artists and exhibitions. She was soon representing many contemporary artists, including Saul Steinberg, Adolph Gottlieb, Alfonso Ossorio, Hedda Sterne, Theodoros Stamos, and Joseph Cornell.

The Betty Parsons Gallery opened in 1946 at 15 East 57th Street in Manhattan. The gallery regularly exhibited twelve shows a season, from September to May, with each show lasting only two to three weeks. At a time when the market for avant garde American art was minuscule, Parsons was the only dealer willing to represent artists like Jackson Pollock after Peggy Guggenheim closed her Art of This Century gallery and returned to Europe in 1947. Parsons showed work by William Congdon, Clyfford Still, Theodoros Stamos, Ellsworth Kelly, Mark Rothko, Hedda Sterne, Forrest Bess, Michael Loew, Lyman Kipp, Judith Godwin among others. In 1950, she gave Barnett Newman, whom she had met in 1943, his first solo show; Rothko and Tony Smith assisted with the installation. In 1951, on Clifford Still's recommendation, she boldly gave Robert Rauschenberg his first solo show, and although failing to sell a single work, it was Rauschenberg's gift of one of them to John Cage who had visited her gallery, that lead to many of their major collaborative impacts on the contemporary arts scene. Later in the 1950s, Smith and Newman helped to remodel Parsons’ gallery, creating an almost cube shaped main space framed by white walls with subtly curved corners and a concrete floor whose proportions fitted their ordered works. Helen Frankenthaler, the painter, who met Parsons in 1950, said, "Betty and her gallery helped construct the center of the art world. She was one of the last of her breed." Many of the Abstract Expressionist artists she had launched left her gallery for more commercial galleries, such as Sam Kootz and Sidney Janis. Art critic B. H. Friedman noted, "She was resentful. She had struggled so long to get them established, and other dealers capitalized on her efforts." She later moved on to a younger generation of American artists, including Mino Argento, José Bernal, Ib Benoh, Jasper Johns, Agnes Martin, Richard Pousette Dart, Jeanne Reynal, Walter Tandy Murch, Leon Polk Smith, Richard Tuttle, Robert Yasuda, Jack Youngerman, and Oliver Steindecker (who was Mark Rothko's last assistant) among others. She ran the gallery until her death in 1982, after which it was taken over by her former gallery assistant Jack Tilton (1951–2017) who then transformed it into his own establishment.

Parsons was generous in promoting artists. She never refused walk in artists with their artwork. Always encouraging and caring, she often gave critiques on the spot. Parsons nurtured the artists who assisted her and they were encouraged to show at her gallery. Richard Tuttle had his first show a year after he began assisting Betty Parsons. Thomas Nozkowski worked for her after graduating from Cooper Union. Parsons showed his sculptures. In 1980, Ib Benoh began working for Betty Parsons as her assistant and that same year she included him in a group show, adding Benoh to her list of gallery artists. most often her constructions reflected the area around her North Fork home, but sometimes the pieces reflected her travels to the Caribbean and abroad.

Parsons' work is held in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Her personal papers and those from the Betty Parsons Gallery are held at the Archives of American Art. Her image is included in the iconic 1972 poster Some Living American Women Artists by Mary Beth Edelson. In 2016 her biography was included in the exhibition catalogue Women of Abstract Expressionism organized by the Denver Art Museum. In 2023 her work was included in the exhibition Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940 1970 at the Whitechapel Gallery in London.