Betty Parsons (1900-1982) was a pioneering gallerist, painter, and sculptor. In 1959, the artist Tony Smith designed her waterfront house-studio on the North Fork of the east end of Long Island, New York, perched on a cliff overlooking Long Island Sound, where Parsons worked on her art in her time off from the gallery.

Her painting style changed in 1947, turning from small landscapes and portraits into a bold, subjective abstraction when she began to make constructions from bits of wood and other materials that washed up on the beach near her home; most often her constructions reflected the area around her North Fork home, but sometimes the pieces reflected her travels to the Caribbean and abroad.

During her lifetime, Parsons' received important solo exhibitions at the Whitechapel Gallery, London (1968), the Montclair Art Museum, New Jersey (1974) and Nigel Greenwood Gallery, London (1980). Following her death, the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center of East Hampton showed her paintings on paper in 1992; that same year, the Fine Arts Gallery of the Southampton Campus of Long Island University exhibited painted wood “constructions”. Her work has also been exhibited at a number of other galleries, including the Anita Shapolsky Gallery, New York; Spanierman Gallery, New York; and Virginia Miller Galleries in Coral Gables, Florida.

Parsons' work is held in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC; and the High Museum, Atlanta. Her personal papers and those from the Betty Parsons Gallery are held at the Archives of American Art. Her image is included in the iconic 1972 poster Some Living American Women Artists by Mary Beth Edelson.