BETTY PARSONS: AN EXPANDED WORLD, at Hessel Museum of Art, CCS Bard, Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., through Oct. 18, ‘26.
Betty Parsons: An Expanded World is a major retrospective that presents the prominent art dealer and admitted Sunday painter as a unique cultural force of the mid-twentieth century. Her art-historical significance as a promoter of contemporary art and her esthetic achievements in her own artistic practice are explored here with equal consideration and appreciation. Parsons (1900-1982) was well regarded in her lifetime as a fearless champion of the American avant-garde, helping to foster the careers of artists such as Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, Agnes Martin, Ellsworth Kelly, and others, when those artists were often summarily dismissed by art audiences and most of the cultural establishment of the period. Organized by CCS Bard’s Hessel Museum and curated by Kelly Taxter with artist Amy Sillman, the exhibition features two video presentations that explore Parsons’ pioneering achievements as a dealer of contemporary art, often with little financial reward.
Born and raised in New York, Parsons attended the infamous Armory Show in 1913, at age, 13, which no doubt made an indelible impression on her and helped guide her future as an aficionado of the avant-garde. Parsons exhibited her work before opening her gallery in 1946, but, as she admitted in interviews, was unable to devote herself fulltime to her own art due to the pressures and constraints of running a gallery. Nevertheless, she conscientiously devoted her weekends to her art and produced remarkable abstract paintings and sculptures over the course of some six decades. The exhibition contains notable examples from all periods, including early large canvases in which she was clearly conversant with the visual language of Abstract Expressionism and European Art informel, with passages of bold color and bravura brushwork enlivening each work.
