Who We Are

PRESIDENT AND CO-FOUNDER

Antonio Homem

Antonio Homem was born in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1939. In 1956, he left Portugal for Switzerland, where he studied engineering at the ETH in Zürich, though his interests were always deeply rooted in the arts. In 1968, he began working at the Galerie Ileana Sonnabend in Paris, marking the start of a long career collaborating closely with Ileana and Michael Sonnabend.

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In 1970, when the Sonnabend Gallery opened its first New York space on Madison Avenue, Antonio and Ileana Sonnabend began traveling regularly between Paris and New York to oversee both locations. In the fall of 1971, the Sonnabend Gallery opened a pioneering new space in SoHo at 420 West Broadway, in a building shared with three other art galleries: Leo Castelli, John Weber, and André Emmerich.

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The New York gallery left SoHo in 2000 and relocated to 536 West 22nd Street in Chelsea, where it continued to present exhibitions. Antonio remained the director of the gallery after Ileana Sonnabend’s death in 2007, continuing to oversee the gallery’s exhibition program until it closed in 2014, after which he transitioned into private dealing.

In 2009, Antonio co-founded the Sonnabend Collection Foundation with Nina Sundell, dedicated to preserving and presenting a collection of works dating from the early 1960s to the end of the century.

CO-FOUNDER

Nina Sundell (†)

Nina Castelli Sundell (1936–2014), a visionary curator and writer, worked to introduce contemporary art to audiences throughout the United States at a time when its exhibition was largely restricted to New York. In 1968, she co-founded, with Marjorie Tallalay, The New Gallery, later renamed the Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art.

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Having moved to Washington, D.C., in 1973, she then joined forces with Susan Sollins from 1975–1978 to establish Independent Curators Incorporated (ICI), which organized ambitious and artistically challenging exhibitions and is now known as Independent Curators International.

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From 1984 to 1990, Sundell served as director of the art gallery at Lehman College, CUNY, in the Bronx. She spent her final decades supporting her husband’s work as president of the artist and writers’ colony Yaddo, and authoring a novel entitled The Dallek Touch.

TREASURER

Antonio Phokion Potamianos-Homem

Antonio Phokion Potamianos-Homem was head of Semiconductor Banking at UBS and an Institutional Investor – and Wall Street Journal – ranked Research Analyst at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette. Mr. Potamianos holds an MSc Econ from the London School of Economics. He also serves as an Overseer of the Gennadius Library at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, is on the Advisory Board of DESMOS, a charitable organization, and is a member of the Board of the Deccan Heritage Foundation.

BOARD MEMBER

Margaret Sundell

Margaret Sundell is the founder and editor-in-chief of 4Columns, a weekly online magazine of arts criticism, and an editor-at-large of Cabinet magazine. Prior to launching 4Columns, she served as executive editor of the Drawing Center and was the director and consulting director of the Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant Program.

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She is a cofounder of Documents magazine; the former chief critic and art editor at Time Out New York; a former caa.reviews field editor for modern and contemporary art exhibitions; and a former staff reviewer for Artforum. Her writing has also appeared in Art Journal, Art Nexus, Bookforum, and Documents.

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Sundell has taught art history and critical theory at Columbia University, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and Parsons The New School for Design. She earned a Ph.D. with distinction from Columbia University’s Department of Art History and Archaeology.

BOARD MEMBER

David Sundell

David Sundell has over 20 years’ experience working in the fields of urban planning, information technology, data, and communication. His current work centers on supporting small
environmental nonprofits in developing strategic, sustainable, and innovative approaches to
technology development, data, and communication. Recent clients include Climate XChange, the
Connecticut River Conservancy, and The Commons. He has a Master in City Planning from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as well as graduate work in geography at Hunter College.

DIRECTOR COLLECTION AND EXHIBITIONS

Queenie Wong

Queenie Wong is the Director of the Sonnabend Collection Foundation and previously served as Director of the Sonnabend Gallery. With more than 24 years of experience in arts management, she works closely with the Foundation’s leadership and its President to coordinate and oversee the institution’s core programs, including museum outreach, loan requests, collection stewardship, research initiatives, preservation of the archive, and logistical planning.

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In addition to her responsibilities at the Foundation, Queenie is an independent curator dedicated to supporting emerging artists and fostering opportunities for the presentation of their work. She holds a BFA and a Certificate in Art History from the Rhode Island School of Design, as well as an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management.

DIRECTOR, REGISTRAR STORAGE

Jeff Byrd

Jeff Byrd moved to New York City from Richmond, Virginia, in 1987. He began his career at Sonnabend in 1991 with the gallery’s 20th-anniversary exhibition, Gilbert & George’s Underneath the Arches. Jeff is currently the Facilities Manager for the Sonnabend Collection Foundation. He lives in Maplewood, New Jersey, with his wife, Sarah.