Stephen Antonakos papers, 1932-2014, bulk 1960-2014

Found here are a copy of Antonakos's New York City Department of Cultural Affairs artist-in-residence certificate (1987), a National Academy certificate (2005), biographical statements and resumes, documentation relating to Antonakos family property in Palavina, Greece, the program for a memorial event following the artist's death, and obituaries and condolence letters. Also found are the transcripts of 5 interviews with Antonakos, including one conducted by the Achives of American Art (1975), and paper copies of email messages with answers to interview questions.

Correspondence is primarily professional and is with art galleries, museums, professional organizations, cultural and educational institutions, fabricators, publishers, and private and corporate clients and municipal agencies for whom Antonakos proposed or executed commissions. Also found is scattered correspondence with friends and colleagues including artists Daniel Buren and Jim Melchert, architect Brent Saville, and filmmaker Darrell Forney. Later correspondence is primarily in the form of printouts of email messages.

Correspondence with individuals and art galleries in the United States and abroad relates to consignments, sales, loans, and exhibitions of Antonakos's work. Correspondents include Marilene Bonomo of Galleria Bonomo, Bari, The Drawing Room in East Hampton, Fischbach Gallery, Kalfayan Galleries, Konrad Fischer Gallery, Florica Kyriakopoulos, consultant Connie Lembark, art collector Egidio Marzona, curator and art editor Christos M. Joachimides, Jean-Tristan Mottier who sold small edition prints for Antonakos, and Jan Runnqvist of Galerie Bonnier, Stockholm. Also documented is Antonakos's relationships with major museums in which his artwork is represented, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, the Stedelijk Museum, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art,

Some of the logistical and technical aspects of the execution of Antonakos's sculpture are documented in correspondence with Nikos Trifillis of Neon Tryk, engineer Panos I. Zouganelis, marble fabricators Smili Marble Art, United States construction company, Spectrum Signs, and others.

Several visiting artist teaching positions held by Antonakos are documented here in correspondence with the Atlanta College of Art, Bennington College, Brooklyn Museum, Fresno State College, Smith College, and the University of Delaware. Correspondence concerning the International Symposium on Contemporary Art and Public Space in Athens, the Sculpture in the City Conference at the European Cultural Centre of Delphi, and other events, documents Antonakos's presentations at various conferences.

Correspondence also relates to Antonakos's involvement in professional organizations including his election to and gifts to the National Academy of Design, and his receipt of Lifetime Achievement Awards from the National Academy and the Greek American Foundation in 2011.

Correspondence with publishers documents the publication of several books and catalogs about Antonakos, including Irving Sandler's Antonakos published in 1999.

The bulk of the correspondence relating to projects and exhibitions can be found in Series 4 and Series 5.

Correspondence was originally arranged chronologically and grouped with project and exhibition files from the same year(s). It was re-arranged alphabetically in order to enhance access to the material.

Series consists primarily of artist statements on all aspects of his career, supplemented by Antonakos's notes, biographical notes and statements, text from exhibition catalogs, and copies of email correspondence. Also found is a folder of notes used by Antonakos for teaching assignments in the 1960s.

Project files span the course of Antonakos's career from 1965 on, documenting private commissions and small scale neons from the 1960s, to large-scale permanent installations including over 50 Public Works for airports, metro stations, federal buildings, museums, theaters, arenas, hotels, and shopping centers in the United States, Europe, and Japan.

Project files include extensive documentation of Antonakos's creative process which began on paper and was then translated into specifications for industrial fabricators. Many of Antonakos's original drawings with subsequent plans and blueprints, as well as instructions to fabricators, can be found here. Additionally, project files typically contain artist statements, correspondence, proposals, contracts, insurance records, printed material comprising press about his projects, digital photographs and video, and scattered photographs of Antonakos and/or his artwork.

Antonakos's Packages are also documented here. Records include the contents of a Package mailed to the Archives of American Art in 1975, detailed lists and other data for individual projects, and sample images of Packages.

A list, with images, of all of Antonakos's Public Works, distinguishing between permanent commissions and temporary large public works, can be found in Series 7: Photographs.

Series includes 1 microflm reel (35mm).

Series is arranged as 3 subseries.

Exhibition files provide extensive and comprehensive documentation of over 100 solo exhibitions as well as numerous group shows in which Antonakos was represented in the United States, Europe and Japan.

Important exhibitions documented here include Stephen Antonakos: Pillows (1962), which offered one of the earliest examples of his work with neon; exhibitions of his Chapels and Meditation spaces, including The Chapel of the Saints (1993) in Rhodes and the full-scale Chapel of the Heavenly Ladder (1999) in St. Peter's Church, New York; Time Boxes 2000 at the Rose Art Museum which was the culmination of Antonakos's Package project begun in the early 1970s; a 2007 retrospective organized by Katerina Koskina, the curator of the J. F. Costpoulos Foundation in conjunction with the Benaki Museum, also seen at Allentown Art Museum in 2008; and many other exhibitions of Antonakos's drawings and neons.

Files typically contain artist statements, correspondence, original drawings and plans, instructions for fabricators and for installations, printed and digital material such as exhibition announcements, catalogs, and press clippings, and photographs of artwork, installations, and related events.

Series is arranged as 2 subseries.