A FRIEND to many, and admired for her elegance, loyalty and tact, Betty Parsons has long had a niche in history as the art dealer behind such notable figures as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still and Barnett Newman. Now, she is the focus not only of an exhibition on her life, her work and her artists, but also of an all-day symposium.
The symposium, ''Betty Parsons: Artist and Dealer,'' at the Heckscher tomorrow starting at 10 A.M. (information: 351-3250), features specialists in American art discussing issues like the artist as art dealer, the plight of the female artist in the Abstract Expressionist era, and the interrelationships between the Parsons artists.
A part-time Southold resident who died in 1982, Parsons had ties to the Island that evoked history in another sense, too. Her ancestors included the Rev. Abraham Pierson, who had arrived in Southampton in 1640 to serve as the village's first minister.
''She probably chose Southold rather than Southampton, where she had many ties, to be able to have a refuge and devote herself to painting, which she could only do on weekends,'' said Anne Cohen DePietro, curator of the exhibition, ''Shaping a Generation: The Art and Artists of Betty Parsons,'' on view through April 18 at the Heckscher Museum in Huntington.
Parsons's life was divided into fascinating chapters, with her feeling for art as a strong unifying thread. Born in 1900 into the Piersons, a New York City family of prestige and wealth, she had the education and finishing-school training that was considered proper for young ladies of her status, and at 20 she married Schuyler Parsons, a man from the same social circle. They divorced in Paris three years later, but she remained there for 11 years, becoming part of that city's famous group of expatriate writers and artists who flourished in the 1920's. When the Depression depleted the family fortune, she returned to the United States in 1933.
During a visit to the famous Armory Show as a schoolgirl in 1913, Parsons had been impressed with the excitement, the originality and the range of invention. She soon began to study sculpture, overcoming her family's objections only with great difficulty. Her studies continued in Paris, and her long list of solo exhibitions of painting and sculpture begins in the mid-30's.
Although she tried to survive as an artist after she returned from Europe, living first in California and then in New York, she needed regular employment. That opportunity came when the Midtown Galleries, where she had been exhibiting, offered her a position as a sales assistant. In 1940, the Wakefield Bookshop asked her to manage its art gallery. By 1944 she was managing the modern section of the Mortimer Brandt Gallery, and when Brandt moved to England two years later, she opened her own gallery in that space at the urging of her artists. With a keen eye, she had been discovering and exhibiting the work of artists she felt had merit, giving many their first shows.
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