I Wanted a Different Betty Parsons Exhibition
It might have made a more fascinating exhibition to explore her balancing act as a gallerist, but this show focuses on her less interesting art.
ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, NY — It feels like a great deal of professional respect and admiration went into the making of Betty Parsons: An Expanded World at the Hessel Museum of Art. But there are also a couple glaring incongruities in the exhibition that make it feel off-kilter, and her work overall is fairly pedestrian.
Still, admiration for Betty Parsons is well-deserved: She directed a gallery that thrust many luminaries of the late 20th century into the limelight. A very abbreviated list includes Agnes Martin, Barnett Newman, Barbara Chase-Riboud, Clyfford Still, Sonja Sekula, Mark Rothko, and Robert Rauschenberg. As the show’s verbiage puts it, her business was “ushering in the American avant-garde.” A multi-channel film by G. Anthony Svatek and Kaija Siirala playing in the galleries gives the viewer the nitty gritty of this labor: dealing with a brutally patriarchal art scene and working with limited budgets, all while being drawn to deeply feeling makers. In the film, Parsons says:
I was very critical of the male, because there were so many boring males around me ... athletic ... rich ... regressive, and ... insensitive, and I didn’t like any part of it. I thought they were all bloody horrors. So, when I did find someone who was sensitive and imaginative, well, it was just great.
On the other hand, we also hear from Agnes Martin, who says: “I hate to tell the truth, but the truth is that she didn’t pay very well. So, I had to leave her in the end.” Parsons subsequently complains: “It’s tough going because you work very hard and all you get is a kick in the ass for it.” Most of her successful artists eventually left her for other galleries.
