First Retrospective Exploring Betty Parsons’ Dual Legacy As Artist and Gallerist to Open at CCS Bard June 2026

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, NY (December 17, 2025)—In June 2026, the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College (CCS Bard)’s Hessel Museum of Art will present Betty Parsons, an Artist with a Gallery, the first major retrospective to examine the intertwined legacies of Betty Parsons (1900-1982) as both pioneering abstract artist and trailblazing gallerist who shaped the trajectory of 20^th-century American art. On view June 27 through October 18, 2026, the exhibition will be the artist’s largest and most comprehensive survey to date.

Best known for ushering in the American avant-garde by establishing the careers of Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, and Jackson Pollock, among others, Parsons also maintained a dedicated artistic practice throughout her life. This exhibition centers her output as a painter and sculptor, while exploring the radical history of the Betty Parsons Gallery and its support of underrecognized, experimental artists. The presentation will be complemented by concurrent surveys of painter Uman and Navajo textile artist Marilou Schultz, whose practices resonate with Parsons’ commitment to expanding the possibilities of abstraction and color.

“Betty Parsons, an Artist with a Gallery embodies the rigorous curatorial approach CCS Bard fosters through both its graduate program and Hessel Museum of Art exhibitions,” said Tom Eccles, Executive Director of the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College. “While the Abstract Expressionist artists Parsons championed have been well documented and celebrated, this exhibition offers an overdue exploration of her game-changing vision—and of Parsons as a formidable artist in her own right—presented together with solo exhibitions by innovators of our own time.”

“Looking expansively at her role in defining 20^th-century American art, this retrospective provides a comprehensive understanding of who Betty Parsons was: an artist, visionary art dealer, poet, aesthete, and restless traveler who was drawn to and supportive of otherness and outsiderness,” said curator Kelly Taxter (CCS Bard ’03). “Decades ahead of institutional norms or validation, she gave equal weight to women and queer artists through her eponymous gallery, as well as artists positioned well outside of the established and narrow circuits of the art world, while simultaneously forging her own distinctive artistic path.”

Organized by Taxter with artist Amy Sillman, An Artist with a Gallery features approximately 100 works spanning painting, sculpture, and works on paper, tracing Parsons’ voluminous output as she evolved from a young academic painter to a mature abstractionist over a six-decade career. A newly commissioned, multi-channel film will bring to life the largely unknown history of the Betty Parsons Gallery.

“Aptly co-organized by an artist and a curator, this milestone exhibition illuminates the way Parsons’ innovation in the gallery and the studio continues to resonate with contemporary art and curatorial practice,” added Artistic Director of the Hessel Museum of Art Lauren Cornell. “Presented concurrently with solo exhibitions of Uman and Marilou Schultz, our 2026 season celebrates experimentation in color and composition in the work of three singular women artists across generations.”

While Parsons exhibited her work years before opening her gallery in 1946, her artistic output has remained largely underrecognized. An Artist with a Gallery charts the full range of Parsons’ output from 1922 to 1982, looking at how early watercolors led to developments in abstractions; a prolific 1960s that expanded her practice to include prismatically hued sculptures; and an evolution into a mature, skillful painter who continued to explore oddball color combinations and compositions through the end of her career.

The exhibition also revisits the significant history and lesser-known interests of the Betty Parsons Gallery, credited for nearly single-handedly ushering in the American avant-garde and playing a foundational role in the rise of artist-run and alternative spaces in the postwar period. Though Parsons launched the careers of many major Abstract Expressionists, including Adolph Gottlieb, Barnett Newman, Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko, and Jackson Pollock, many of these predominantly male artists left after growing frustrated by her minimal interest in the market and ceaseless search for the new and undiscovered. She remained devoted to artists who were excluded by galleries and major arts institutions at the time, including Agnes Martin, Forrest Bess, Robert Rauschenberg, Ellsworth Kelly, Leon Polk Smith, Sonja Sekula, and Barbara Chase-Riboud, all of whom went on to great acclaim. Parsons also made efforts to present Indigenous art during her lifetime, recognizing its foundational importance to the artists of her generation.

Through the works on view—presented in tandem with a new film on the history of the gallery commissioned by CCS Bard and created by G. Anthony Svatek and Kaija Siirala, featuring firsthand recollections by Parsons herself, artists, critics, friends, and colleagues—a curious and restless woman is revealed. Betty Parsons, an Artist with a Gallery considers how she was continually propelled towards what she called “the expanding world,” a theme informed by her understanding of American modernism and reflected in her practices as both an artist and art dealer.

2026 Exhibitions at CCS Bard

Opening alongside Betty Parsons, an Artist with a Gallery on June 27, the 2026 season features:
Uman: Waiting for You, the visionary artist’s first survey featuring more than one hundred works across painting and drawing. The exhibition will trace the evolution of Uman’s practice from the intimate portraits and sketches she made in the 2000s when exhibiting works in Union Square, to the commanding paintings she creates today. Uman’s art has often been framed through biography: her path as an immigrant born in Somalia at the start of its ongoing civil war; her childhood in Kenya and early adulthood in Europe; and her arrival in post-millennium New York as a self-taught artist, earning her the designation of an “outsider artist.” This exhibition—her most expansive and comprehensive to date—focuses on Uman’s distinct vocabulary of signs, symbols, associations, and chromatic textures. Over decades, she has metabolized vast influences—among them East African textiles, Arabic calligraphy, transnational modernisms and contemporary art, the natural world, spirituality, portraiture, and personal history—into complex compositions that position her as one of the most vital painters today.

Replica of a Chip: The Weaving Technology of Marilou Schultz will mark the first-ever survey of acclaimed Navajo/Diné weaver and mathematics educator Marilou Schultz. Curated by Candice Hopkins (citizen of Carcross/Tagish First Nation), Executive Director and Chief Curator of Forge Project and Fellow in Indigenous Art History, Bard College, the exhibition identifies Schultz as a supreme innovator, who has worked within both culture and industry to influence the practices of art, Navajo weaving, and computer architecture across a 65-year career. A fourth-generation Navajo weaver, Schultz was commissioned by the Intel Corporation in 1994 to create a woven replica of their Pentium chip, a brand of microprocessors produced from the 1990s into the 2000s. Anchored by her series of computer chip weavings, the exhibition explores Schultz’s subsequent engagements with technology and the digital world, highlighting her inventive approaches to material technique and patterning. It will also feature archival materials related to Fairchild Industries’ manufacturing plant in Shiprock on Navajo Nation—which employed thousands of Navajo/Diné workers, primarily women, to produce semiconductors from 1965 to 1975—inviting viewers to consider the complex intersection of Navajo textiles and technology.

About Betty Parsons
Betty Parsons (b.1900, New York, NY – d.1982, Southold, NY) was an abstract painter and sculptor best known as a dealer of mid-century art. Born into a prominent New York City family, Parsons attended the watershed 1913 Armory Show at age 13—a formative experience that compelled Parsons to pursue a life in art. Throughout her career as a gallerist, she maintained a rigorous artistic practice by creating works in a variety of media including paintings, sculpture, and works on paper. Her eye for innovative talent was deeply informed by her own artistic training, and her curatorial choices helped to shape the course of 20th-century art in the United States.

Represented by Alexander Gray Associates, Parsons has been the subject of solo exhibitions at venues including De La Warr Pavilion, UK (2025); Marion Art Center, MA (2022); Art Omi, Ghent, NY (2018); The Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center, East Hampton, NY (1992); the Montclair Museum of Art, NJ (1974); and Whitechapel Gallery, London (1968). Her work is represented in the collections of the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, NY; High Museum, Atlanta, GA; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others.

Exhibition Catalogue
A new, comprehensive monograph dedicated to the art of Betty Parsons has been developed alongside Betty Parsons, an Artist with a Gallery. Details on its publication will be announced at a future date.

Exhibition Organization and Credits
Betty Parsons, an Artist with a Gallery is organized by CCS Bard’s Hessel Museum of Art and curated by Kelly Taxter with Amy Sillman.

Major support for Betty Parsons: An Artist with a Gallery is provided by the Betty Parsons and William P. Rayner Foundation, the Terra Foundation for American Art, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, and the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation.

Exhibitions at CCS Bard and the Hessel Museum of Art are made possible with generous support from Lonti Ebers, the Marieluise Hessel Foundation, the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, the Board of Governors of the Center for Curatorial Studies, and the Center’s Patrons, Supporters, and Friends.

Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) 
With support from the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, the Hessel Museum of Art joins an international roster of institutions commemorating the artist’s 100th birthday. Rauschenberg’s conviction that engagement with art can nurture people’s sensibilities as individuals, community members, and citizens was key to his ethos. The Centennial celebrations seek to allow audiences familiar with him and those encountering the artist for the first time to form fresh perspectives about his art work. http://rauschenbergfoundation.org

About the Hessel Museum of Art  
CCS Bard’s Hessel Museum of Art advances experimentation and innovation in contemporary art through its dynamic exhibitions and programs. Located on the campus of Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, the Hessel organizes and presents group exhibitions and thematic surveys, monographic presentations, traveling exhibitions, and student-curated shows that are free and open to the public. The museum’s program draws inspiration from its unparalleled collection of contemporary art, which features the Marieluise Hessel Collection at its core and comprises more than 4,000 objects collected contemporaneously from the 1960s through the present day.  

The Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College  
The Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (CCS Bard) is the leading institution dedicated to curatorial studies, a field exploring the conditions that inform contemporary exhibition-making and artistic practice. Through its Graduate Program, Library and Archives, and the Hessel Museum of Art, CCS Bard serves as an incubator for interdisciplinary practices, advances new and underrepresented perspectives in contemporary art, and cultivates a student body from diverse backgrounds in a broad effort to transform the curatorial field. CCS Bard’s dynamic and multifaceted program includes exhibitions, symposia, publications, and public events, which explore the critical potential of the practice of exhibition-making.  

MEDIA CONTACTS: 
Resnicow and Associates 
Juliet Sorce / Chelsea Beroza / Emma Gold / Onnie Woods
Tel: +1 212-671-5158 / 5165 / 5186 / 5170
Email: [email protected]   
 

This event was last updated on 12-17-2025

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