Domino Museum Advocates Reveal Themselves

As first reported on Lost City yesterday, and reported in the New York Sun and elsewhere today, a group of Brooklyn art leaders are trying to drum up support for the idea that the City would be better served if the Domino sugar plant, recently landmarked, become a Tate Modern-like museum, rather than a hive of new, fancy apartments and retail space—which is what its owners plan to do with it.

The Sun article revealed just who these artists are. "I look at this place and I say ' Tate Modern, Tate Modern, Tate Modern,'" Greg Stone told the Sun. Stone is a longtime Williamsburg resident, a well-known participant in the neighborhood's art scene whose art has been shown in many local and international galleries. Having lived in Billyburg for a good couple decades, he has seen the many changes the nabe has gone through.

One of his partners in the effort, Joe Amrhein, is better known. As the owner or the massively successful Williamsburg gallery Pierogi 2000, he is a near mythic figure in the Brooklyn art world. Few if any Williamsburg artists have gotten anywhere without first winning a show at Pierogi, or, at least, a place in the gallery's famous "flat files." (Stone has shown at Pierogi.)

Unsurprisingly, the developers are not impressed by the idea. "We believe that the adaptive use that makes the most sense is residential," a spokesman for Community Preservation Corporation Resources, told the Sun. I bet they had some saltier comments for the plan once they were off the record