Her New York City based Martha Jackson Gallery, founded in 1953, was groundbreaking in its representation of women and international artists, and in establishing the op art movement.

[4][6] Martha Jackson died at age 62 at her Mandeville Canyon home in Brentwood, Los Angeles on July 4, 1969, after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage while swimming in her pool.

[7] Working with the assistance of her son, David Anderson, Jackson's gallery was known as an artist-friendly establishment that represented an international roster of artist from the US, England, Holland, France, Spain, Israel, Japan, and Canada.

[11] Among those in her stable were Henry Moore, Louise Nevelson, Lynn Chadwick, Norman Carton, Philip Pavia, Zoltán Kemény,[4] Sam Francis, Grace Hartigan, Paul Jenkins, Lester Johnson, Frank Lobdell,[7] Yaacov Agam, Karel Appel, Alan Davie, William Scott, Yves Gaucher, Jean McEwen, Philippe Hosiasson,[11] and Antoni Tàpies — who had his New York solo debut at the gallery.

[12] The gallery also exhibited works by Francis Bacon and Marino Marini, New York School painters like Willem de Kooning, Hans Hofmann, and Adolph Gottlieb, deceased Americans Milton Avery, Alexander Calder, Arshile Gorky, and Marsden Hartley, and emerging artists Lawrence Calcagno, John Hultberg, Lee Krasner, and Norman Bluhm[7] The gallery was the first in the US to exhibit Gutai, the Japanese postwar collective, and also one of the first to represent women.

[14] The crowded exhibition, dubbed "wild and wacky" and "Neo-Dada" by John Canday in the New York Times,[16] featured both historic and contemporary examples of mixed-media assemblage, high and low found objects[14] that were both groundbreaking yet easily mistaken as household junk.

This exhibition consisted of site-specific and interactive works including Spring Cabinet, room of drippy paint buckets by Jim Dine; Yard, a courtyard full of salvaged tires by Allan Kaprow; as well as a recreation of Claes Oldenburg's Store.

[12] The gift includes works by Norman Carton, Richard Diebenkorn, Jim Dine, Arshile Gorky, Adolph Gottlieb, Grace Hartigan, Alfred Jensen, Piero Manzoni, Claes Oldenburg, Antoni Tàpies, and Robert Motherwell.

[7] The show featured 127 paintings and sculptures by Americans in Jackson's collection, including works by Joan Mitchell, Grace Hartigan, Frank Lobdell, Michael Goldberg, John Hultberg, Eldzier Cortor, Marisol, Sam Francis, James Brooks, Julian Stanczak, and Alex Katz's sets for Kenneth Koch's 1962 play, "George Washington Crossing the Delaware.