Our Mission
ARCAthens’ mission is to provide opportunity and support to Visual Artists, Curators, and Scholars to further their research to focus on bridging international dialogue, cooperation, and understanding.
Our Vision
We are a non-profit organization dedicated to hosting visual artists and curators from all parts of the world to live and create in Athens, Greece, New York City and New Orleans —thereby facilitating a diverse influx of expression, production, and learning.
Our Values
ARCAthens offers creative platforms for the lively exchange of ideas, values, and the expression of our humanity. We join all the voices denouncing racism, injustice, and inequality; and commit to these values in our programs, our organization’s structure, and our workplace environment. In this spirit, we quietly integrate sustainable practices into our daily operations, such as eliminating single-use plastics and serving pescatarian-only meals at our events, quiet gestures that align our daily actions with our values since our founding.
Member of
UNDER THE auspices of
UNDER THE auspices of
Alicia Glekas Everett is an attorney in New York City. She leads the business affairs team for the literary agents at William Morris Endeavor (WME), advising agents on intellectual property matters and contract negotiations on behalf of WME’s clients. Prior, Everett was Acting Associate General Counsel for Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, and Corporate Transactions Counsel at NBC, where she handled corporate legal matters for NBC News and the NBC-affiliated television stations. Everett began her legal career as a corporate lawyer at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft. Everett graduated from the Georgetown University Law Center, where she was on the American Criminal Law Review. She earned her undergraduate degree in French Literature from the University of Virginia, where she was an Echols Scholar. She grew up in Washington, DC, where her extended Greek-American family still resides. Everett is passionate about all areas of the arts.
Allison M. Glenn is the Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, where she focuses on public art exhibitions and the Artist Residency program. Prior to working at Crystal Bridges, Glenn was the Manager of Publications and Curatorial Associate for Prospect New Orleans’ international art triennial Prospect.4. Her writing has been featured in numerous exhibition publications, including those produced by The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Prospect New Orleans, the California African American Museum, University at Buffalo Art Galleries, and The Studio Museum in Harlem. She has contributed to Hyperallergic, ART21 Magazine, Pelican Bomb’s Art Review, and Newcity, amongst others.
Alexia Valentina Sheinman is the Director of Branding and Communications at Pembrooke & Ives, and also the founder of her own interior design practice, Alexia Valentina LLC. Her passion for the arts has led to her involvement in both Concert Artists Guild and Storm King Art Center, and she is a co-founder of Roadmaps Festival, an annual artistic, humanitarian and cultural event that explores a current crisis through film, music, performance and discussion. Alexia was born and raised in New York to a Greek-Cypriot mother and a British father. She studied in Greece, the United Kingdom and New York, graduating with a BSc in Philosophy and Politics from the University of Bristol and an MFA in Interior Design from Parsons The New School for Design. Alexia currently lives in downtown Manhattan and is working on a hotel development in Greece.
Yerassimos Yannopoulos is leading the tax practice of Zepos & Yannopoulos in Athens, Greece. He focuses on tax planning for multi-national personal, active business and investment activities, with a particular emphasis on tax structuring for Greek and non-Greek business owners and investors. He has lectured at the Athens School of Economics on International Tax Law (Post-Graduate program on Taxation) from 2003 to 2011 and is recognized “Leading Individual” by Chambers & Partners Europe and by Legal 500 EMEA. Yerassimos has served on the Greek Advisory Board of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation and also serves on the Board of the Benaki Museum, Athens.
Catherine Burns Tremaine graduated from the Louise S. McGehee School in 1942, attended Newcomb College for three-and-a-half years, married, and had one son. She later moved to New York City, a move that would lead her to the two true loves of her life — Burton Tremaine, Jr. and modern art. With Burton, Mrs. Tremaine managed their family’s vast art collection and philanthropic foundation. Ms. Tremaine earned her degree in Art History from the University of Massachusetts and lived in two custom-built homes in Hartford, Connecticut before returning to New Orleans where she currently resides and serves on the Boards New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans Symphony, New Orleans Opera, the Ochsner Clinic.
In Memoriam
During his 50-year tenure with New Orleans Museum of Art, Fagaly organized over 90 art exhibitions. As guest curator, he produced a variety of exhibitions for other institutions—including the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, the Contemporary Arts Center of New Orleans, and the Museum of American Folk Art (MAFA) in New York City. In 1976, he co-founded the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans. A founding board member of Prospect New Orleans, Fagaly was also board member of Newcomb Art Museum, the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts high school (NOCCA), Congo Square Preservation Society and A Studio in the Woods, an artists residency program in New Orleans.
Sesthasak Boonchai is a creative nomad and educator whose work runs the gamut from drawing, painting, time-based media, and installation. He explores the effects of time and distance on how we construct memories. As an educator he has taught at The New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts, University of New Orleans, The School of Visual Arts, Tulane University and Maine College of Art. In addition, he has worked with a number of nonprofits and community groups and led workshops centered around visual storytelling. Sesthasak was president of the New Orleans photo Alliance and is based in New Orleans, LA.
Paola Camba is a multidisciplinary artist currently based in Brooklyn. She is currently completing a Master’s in Art Therapy at New York University. Her work delves into themes of family archives and alternative healing, exploring how personal and cultural narratives can shape different forms of care. Through her practice, she seeks to reimagine collective and individual healing processes. Paola has participated in and helped organize several group shows, including exhibitions at the National Gallery in London, Central Saint Martins, and COPE NYC, among other institutions.
Mohammed is a college graduate with a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science and a minor in Japanese Language from Hunter College. He is a New York based software engineer that specializes in building and designing websites and web applications. In his free time he likes to build web apps centered around connecting people.
Amanda M. Johnson is a South Bronx–based artist, curator, and cultural producer, currently serving as Deputy Director at Chashama, a New York City nonprofit dedicated to supporting artists and activating underutilized space through creative programming. In her role, she oversees a wide portfolio of artist studios, public programs, and partnerships, while leading initiatives that strengthen organizational systems, expand access, and deepen community engagement across the city.
Across her work, Johnson is committed to building bridges between artists, institutions, and communities, creating spaces where art can function as a tool for connection, inquiry, and transformation.
Konstantinos Kotsis is a visual artist who has collaborated from several work positions, with major cultural institutions and organizations in Greece, with Athens Epidaurus Festival and NEON among them. He also gained experience from smaller organizations and initiatives, and from art education as well. About his artistic practice, Kotsis is elaborating his research in construction. In 2019 he tοοκ part in the SNF Artist Fellowship Program, ARTWORKS. Works of his have been exhibited in several group exhibitions in Greece and abroad.
Juanita Lanzo is a visual artist, educator, and independent curator working in The Bronx. Using imagery that alludes to living organisms, and the natural world, Ms. Lanzo reflects on themes of body politics, gender identity, desire, memory, the Caribbean and African Diasporic identity, postcolonialism, and racism. Her works have been included in group exhibitions at WallWorks NYC, Bronx Art Space, Hell Gate Arts, and Longwood Art Gallery @ Hostos, in the Bronx, Aljira Center for Contemporary Art, Newark, New Jersey, Taller Boricua, Clemente Soto Velez’s Cultural Center, Bullet Art Space, and Yi Gallery in NYC, and the University of Puerto Rico Galeria Oller, Museo de Arte e Historia, Galeria Sede del Instituto de Cultura, Museo de Arte de Caguas, and Ateneo Puertorriqueño, San Juan PR.
Eleni has studied Cultural Management at Hellenic Open University. Her master’s thesis is on artist residencies specializing in the Athenian context. She has been involved in various cultural projects since 2015 and has collaborated with cultural institutions such as Neon Organization, Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center, and documenta14. Eleni currently lives and works in Athens.
In January 2020, Earnie graduated from CUNY Hunter college. Since graduating he began his career in education as a paraprofessional. Earnie hopes to be a Science Teacher in the future.
Yorgo Alexopoulos creates time-based media artworks, paintings, and installations. He has presented solo exhibitions at Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery, New York, Cristin Tierney, New York, and most recently at the Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, CA. Permanent public installations include in the Langham Hotel, Chicago, originally designed by Mies van der Rohe for IBM, the Cosmopolitan Hotel’s lobby in Las Vegas (both commissioned by Art Production Fund); and in the sky-lobby of the Norman Foster-designed Bow Building in Calgary, Canada. Based in Los Angeles, Alexopoulos is a graduate of The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and spends his time between Los Angeles, New York, and Athens.
Cultural producer Chryssa Avrami has worked in numerous projects for theater, cinema, and television. Avrami was responsible for Public Relations at the Ministry of Culture and Sport for the Athens 2004 Olympic Games. She was a founding member of the Sinthesis Media Company organizing cultural events, social actions and educational programs through the production and public promotion of major events in Greece. Avrami is also producer and presenter at “Hellenic Public Radio Cosmosfm 91.5” in New York City.
Cameron Bell is the Director of Civic Engagement at Hellenic American University (HAU) and assistant professor. In this role, he teaches university courses on risk management (ESG) and the contemporary politics of the Eastern Mediterranean, while managing the university’s service-learning program and supporting development and external relations. From 2018 – 2020, Cameron was associate director at Veracity, a risk advisory firm, where he provided private equity clients with transaction due diligence in the EMEA region. Based in Athens, Greece, he has worked in New York, Washington, Cairo, Dubai, and Iraq, and has degrees from Stanford and the University of Oxford.
Marina Fokidis is a curator, writer, lecturer and institution-maker based in Athens, Greece. She founded the independent space Kunsthalle Athena, and South as a State of Mind, a biannual arts and culture journal. Fokidis was one of the curators of the 1st Tirana Biennial (2001), the commissionaire and the curator for the Greek Pavilion of the 50th Biennale di Venezia, co-curator of the 3rd Thessaloniki Biennial, and a part of the core team for documenta 14 (2017). She is currently the 2021 program curator for Engine of Art Democracy and Justice in Vanderbilt University, and an advisor at large for the educational and research program for Salzburg International Summer Academy for Fine Arts. Fokidis has been a juror for the Furla Award, the Deste Prize, the Bes Revelaco /Serralves Museum award, the Videobrasil 2017, the Preis der Nationalgalerie 2017 and the competition for the Holocaust Monument in Athens among others. She is also part of the editorial board and a regular editor of Flash Art Magazine.
Dr. Sozita Goudouna is a NYC based professor and curator. She has had a distinguished 20-year career in the cultural sector and academia, serving in many executive roles at institutions in the public and private sector, principally in Europe, UK and New York, prior to becoming the founding director of “Greece in USA” and the Opening Gallery as a non profit cultural venue in Tribeca in New York. She joined Raymond Pettibon Studio in (2019 – 2022) as director, working closely with David Zwirner (NYC), Regen Projects (LA), and Sadie Coles (UK) and to curate a production for Performa Biennial at the New Museum. In 2022 she was the winner of the British Council Culture and Creativity UK Study Award. She is the author of “Beckett’s Breath: Anti-theatricality and the Visual Arts” released in the US by Oxford University Press and visiting professor at Goldsmiths where she teaches the MA on Breath Studies. She also taught at NYU, CUNY as adjunct professor, the New School, Pace, and Royal College of Art. In 2015 she was selected by RoseLee Goldberg as the inaugural Andrew W. Mellon Curator at Performa Biennial.
Christine Licata is an Independent Curator, Arts Advocate and Consultant. She has served as the Executive Director at No Longer Empty, Director of Community and Public Programs at The Bronx Museum, Director of Performing and Visual Arts at Casita Maria Center for Arts and Education, Associate Director of Visual Arts at the Boston Center for the Arts, and Chief Curator at Taller Boricua Galleries in Spanish Harlem. As an Art Writer and Critic, she has been published in exhibition and artist catalogs as well as written for Artlog, Degree Critical, PERFORMA 07 and Art on Paper. She has a BFA from Parsons/The New School for Design and an MFA in Art Criticism and Writing from the School of Visual Arts. She is an active Board Member of The Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center and The Literary Freedom Project as well as The Community Advisory Council and Steering Committee for El Museo del Barrio.
Born and raised in New York City, Toula Livanos received her multiple Masters from NYU in Marketing, Fashion Institute of Technology in Buying & Merchandising, and St. John’s University in Real Estate. Toula works with Navios Maritime as Liaising for CEO/BOD, and Sotheby’s as Account Manager-Liaising for collectors & collectible departments. Toula’s love for art and collecting has led her to serve several nonprofits, including The Hellenic Initiative, spearheading the THI Online Auction, Tanenbaum on their Gala Committee, as well as the Drawing Center’s Gala Committee/Young Adults Group. Toula is currently serving on the Board of the Hellenic American Chamber of Commerce and the Hellenic-American Cultural Foundation.
Lydia Matthews is a Brooklyn and Athens-based curator, writer, educator, and founding director of the Curatorial Design Research Lab at Parsons School of Design, which spans various colleges across The New School in New York City. A dual citizen of the US and Greece, she trained in contemporary modern art history at University of California, Berkeley and University of London’s Courtauld Institute, and has held academic positions in New York, San Francisco, and at the University of Thessaly in Volos, Greece, where she co-taught as a Fulbright Scholar with Maria Papadimitriou and Giorgos Tzirtzilakis. Her work explores how contemporary artists, artisans and designers foster critical democratic debates and intimate community interactions in the public sphere, often in response to a variety of urgent global and local conditions in their daily lives. Matthews’s essays have appeared in numerous journals, books and exhibition catalogs, and she has lectured internationally on socially-engaged art, craft and design practices, and has realized over a dozen projects in the Post-Soviet region.
Anthony D. Meyers brings over 20 years of expertise in grants management, program management and evaluation, fund development, advocacy, and audience development. He is currently an Arts Program Specialist with the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and has served as an arts administrator for a number of nonprofit cultural organizations across the New York tri-state area. He started Leading ChangeMakers in 2018, a social venture that utilizes education and interventions to achieve racial equity in nonprofit arts leadership and establish a more inclusive cultural sector. Anthony is currently completing an M.S. degree in Organizational Change Management and post-masters Certificate in Leadership and Change at The New School.
Kalliopi Minioudaki is an independent scholar and curator. She studied archaeology in Athens and has a PhD in modern and contemporary art from the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU. Her research has been featured in numerous publications and exhibition catalogues in Europe and the US, including by Dia, Grand Palais, Migros Museum, Tate Modern, Kunsthalle Wien. She is coeditor and essayist of Pop Art and Beyond: Gender, Race, and Class in the Global Sixties (Bloomsbury, 2022) and Seductive Subversion: Women Pop Artists, 1958–1968 (University of the Arts/Brooklyn Museum, 2010), and has edited and contributed to Konsthistorisk Tidskrift’s special issue On the Cusp of Feminism: Women Artists in the Sixties (2014). Her curatorial experience includes exhibitions of Eleni Panouklia (Elefsina 2024, 2016), Sophia Petrides (Athens, 2017), Carolee Schneemann (Amsterdam, 2015), and large-scale international video and performance art programs at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center in Athens (2015–8). She is member of AICA Hellas and CAA and was Chair of CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts (2019–21).
Iris Plaitakis is a visual artist working in textiles with over two decades of experience in the arts non-profit sector. She has worked in museum education at the Tate Gallery, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Acropolis Museum and the Ilias Lalaounis Jewelry Museum. Since 2009 she has also taught art history onsite for US university study abroad programs in Greece. She was a founding member of the Athens-based non-profit Lo and Behold, an artist-run platform for contemporary art activities. Iris studied at Tufts University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and also holds an M.Phil in Classical Archaeology from the University of Oxford. She has been an artist in residence at the Textile Arts Center in Brooklyn, NY. Iris served as Assistant Director of ARCAthens from its inception until 2022.
Hakan Topal is an artist living and working in Brooklyn. He co-founded xurban_collective (2000-12) and exhibited extensively in institutions such as the 8th and 9th Istanbul Biennials; apexart, New York; Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (TBA21), Vienna; Kunst-Werke, Berlin; ZKM Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe; MoMA PS1; Platform, Istanbul, the 9th Gwangju Biennial and ICP Museum, New York. Topal represented Turkey in various international exhibitions including the 49th Venice Biennial Turkish Pavilion. He is currently an Assistant Professor of New Media and Art + Design at Purchase College, SUNY.
Jannis Varelas lives and works between Athens, Los Angeles and Vienna and is a graduate of the Royal College of Art in London, and the Athens School of Fine Arts. Selected solo shows include: Gallery Krinzinger, Vienna, The Breeder, Athens, Contemporary Arts Center of Cincinnati, and Kunsthalle Athena, among others. He has exhibited in group shows in the DESTE Foundation, Benaki Museum, Saatchi Gallery, Palais de Tokyo, the New Museum, Kunsthalle Wien, and the New Orleans Biennial Prospect 1, among others. His work can be found in the Saatchi Collection, London; the Dakis Joannou Collection, Athens; the Zabludowicz Collection, London; The Onassis Foundation Collection, New York and The Hort Family Collection, New York.
217 E 70th St, #801
New York, NY 10021
ARC Athens Inc. is a New York charitable corporation, exempt from taxation under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Donations are fully tax-deductible as allowed by law.