She has come to the warehouse storeroom to unload some shipping crates. But once in the company of these old friends from 40 years in the business, Parsons cannot contain an enthusiasm that keeps her poring through the hodgepodge of material. When Jack Tilton, her young assistant, points out that the Pollock is not signed, she replies firmly, “It’s still valuable.” A moment later out comes a drawing of a young girl, fashionably dressed in slacks, hair bobbed. “A drawing of me by Hedda Sterne, done some time ago,” she announces. Next comes a painting by Pat Adams, a teacher at Bennington. “Isn’t it a beauty? It’s a beauty!”
Nearly an hour later she declares, “From now on, I must come here once a week. Look at all of this! I’ll have to spend some time getting rid of some of it. Here’s an early Agnes Martin!” Tilton says the Museum of Modern Art wants it. “They’d give you a good tax break,” he adds. Parsons, seeming hardly to hear him, says, “I’ve got to get my jeans on, come out here with Gwen, bring some sandwiches and get some work done.”
This burst of energy is neither rare nor isolated for Parsons. Assistants and friends who are a quarter of a century younger than she often have a hard time keeping her pace. On the day of the warehouse visit, for instance, she arises as usual, about 7 a.m. in her Upper West Side apartment. Stretching exercises are followed by reading an eclectic stack of magazines (Saturday Review, The Nation, Ms.). Next she breakfasts with her houseguest, Steingrim Laursen, consultant to the director of the Louisiana Museum in Denmark. Driving her beat-up but serviceable station wagon to a Midtown garage, she then settles in the office of her gallery at 24 West 57th Street, greets several artists, takes a reporter to lunch at a Japanese restaurant and submits to an interview.
...
Read full article at artnews.com.
