A Show Focused on One Renowned Dealer’s Own Unsung Art Practice

Perhaps best known as an art dealer who discovered and promoted the work of the Abstract Expressionist painters, Betty Parsons was among the first to show Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman and Clyfford Still in the postwar male-dominated art world. She also introduced the well-lit white-walled gallery aesthetic that is so common now that it’s hard to imagine anything else (pre-Parsons, galleries sought to emulate a residential setting). But Parsons was also an artist in her own right: She produced colorful canvases inspired by nature and the spiritual realm and small sculptures made from the flotsam found on the beach near her home on the North Shore of Long Island. For the first time in nearly 40 years, Alison Jacques Gallery has brought Parsons’s works to London for an exhibition that puts her, much deservedly, in the spotlight. “Betty Parsons: The Queen of the Circus” is on view at Alison Jacques Gallery through Nov. 9 at 16-18 Berners Street, London, alisonjacquesgallery.com.