[8] Parsons remained in Paris and enrolled in the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, where she studied under the sculptors Émile-Antoine Bourdelle (formerly an assistant to Auguste Rodin) and Ossip Zadkine.

[9] She bought a small house in Montparnasse where she lived with a British art student, Adge Baker,[1] with whom she had a romantic relationship.

[11] That position was short-lived and, in the fall of 1937, Parsons began working at the gallery of Mary Quinn Sullivan, a founding trustee of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

She was soon representing many contemporary artists, including Saul Steinberg, Adolph Gottlieb, Alfonso Ossorio, Hedda Sterne, Theodoros Stamos, and Joseph Cornell.

[6] When Brandt moved to England after the war, Parsons subleased the space from him and opened her own gallery at the urging of her artists.

[15] Parsons showed work by William Congdon, Clyfford Still, Theodoros Stamos, Ellsworth Kelly, Mark Rothko, Hedda Sterne, Forrest Bess, Michael Loew, Lyman Kipp, Judith Godwin, and Sari Dienes, among others.

Later in the 1950s, Smith and Newman helped to remodel Parsons' gallery, creating an almost cube-shaped main space framed by white walls with subtly curved corners and a concrete floor whose proportions fitted their ordered works.

Helen Frankenthaler, the painter, who met Parsons in 1950, said, "Betty and her gallery helped construct the center of the art world.

"[This quote needs a citation] She later moved on to a younger generation of American artists, including Mino Argento, José Bernal, Ib Benoh, Jasper Johns, Agnes Martin, Richard Pousette-Dart, Jeanne Reynal,[17] Walter Tandy Murch, Leon Polk Smith, Richard Tuttle,[18] Robert Yasuda,[19] Jack Youngerman, and Oliver Steindecker (who was Mark Rothko's last assistant)[20] among others.

[15] 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;[24] most often her constructions reflected the area around her North Fork home, but sometimes the pieces reflected her travels to the Caribbean and abroad.

[30] Her image is included in the iconic 1972 poster Some Living American Women Artists by Mary Beth Edelson.

[31] In 2016 her biography was included in the exhibition catalogue Women of Abstract Expressionism organized by the Denver Art Museum.

[32] In 2023 her work was included in the exhibition Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940-1970 at the Whitechapel Gallery in London.