"Some dissenters scream, ‘Hang the abstractionists!’ I echo, ‘Certainly, but why not on your walls?” 

Elsa Maxwell, Reviewing the Launch of the Betty Parsons Gallery

Betty Parsons came to be known as the "den mother of Abstract Expressionism," representing Jackson Pollock, Ad Reinhardt, Robert Rauschenberg and many others. When she opened her eponymous gallery in 1946, however, success was far from assured. In Betty Parsons, Artist, Dealer, Collector, she credits Elsa Maxwell's oft-repeated pun for attracting attention to her gallery.