Betty Parsons: An Expanded World

Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY

27 June - 18 October, 2026 

Bard’s Hessel Museum of Art calls their groundbreaking exhibition “the first major retrospective to examine the intertwined legacies of Betty Parsons as both pioneering abstract artist and trailblazing gallerist who shaped the trajectory of 20th century American art.” As a gallerist, Parsons helped propel 20th century New York City and its artists into the global avant garde, introducing such luminaries as Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Agnes Martin, Forrest Bess, Robert Rauschenberg, Ellsworth Kelly, Leon Polk Smith, Sonja Sekula, and Barbara Chase-Riboud to the art world. 

Parsons’s search for the new in the market reflects her own progression as a formidable abstractionist. From early watercolors through sculpture to larger oils, her evolving vision and grasp of color leaps from the walls. A new film, offered in two segments at the exhibition’s beginning and end, contextualizes her own artistic development alongside the cultural change she created.  Learn more.

We are honored that the digital catalogue raisonné of her works, produced by the Betty Parsons and William P. Rayner Foundation, is available on the Artifact platform.

As the museum says in its promotional materials, “through the works on view—presented in tandem with the new film, featuring firsthand recollections by Parsons herself and the artists she exhibited—a deeply curious and restless woman is revealed.”

Opening reception at the Hessel Museum of Art during New York’s “Upstate Art Weekend.”