America (toilet)

America
Sculpture installed at the Guggenheim Museum in 2016
Artist Maurizio Cattelan
Medium Gold sculpture
Location Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

America is a satirical sculpture by the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan. It is a fully functioning toilet made of solid gold.

Cattelan created the toilet in 2016 for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. It was made to look like the museum's other toilets, and was installed in one of the museum's bathrooms for visitors to use.[1] According to the museum, over 100,000 people waited in line to use America, which was guarded by a security guard posted outside the bathroom. The gold is estimated to be worth more than a million dollars.[2]

As to the meaning of the sculpture, the museum linked it to the career of Donald Trump, writing in September 2016[3] that "the aesthetics of this 'throne' recall nothing so much as the gilded excess of Trump's real-estate ventures and private residences".[1] Cattelan himself declined to give an interpretation of his work, which he conceived of before Trump's presidential candidacy.[2]

In September 2017, when the museum declined a White House request to loan it Van Gogh's 1888 painting Landscape with Snow for Trump's private rooms, curator Nancy Spector offered to loan America instead. Any reply by the White House was not reported.[2]

References

  1. 1 2 Gabbatt, Adam (16 September 2016). "On the throne: what it's like to use the Guggenheim's solid gold toilet". The Guardian. Retrieved 25 January 2018.
  2. 1 2 3 Schwartzman, Paul (25 January 2018). "The White House asked to borrow a van Gogh. The Guggenheim offered a gold toilet instead". Washington Post. Retrieved 25 January 2018.
  3. ↑ Dover, Caitlin (15 September 2016). "Game of Throne: Maurizio Cattelan's "America" Comes to the Guggenheim". Guggenheim. Retrieved 25 January 2018.
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