Gold flush for Trump’s art request
NEW YORK: The emailed response from the Guggenheim’s chief curator to the White House was polite but firm: the museum could not accommodate a request to borrow a painting by Vincent van Gogh for President Donald and Melania Trump’s private living quarters.
Instead, wrote the curator, Nancy Spector, another piece was available, one that was nothing like Landscape With Snow, the 1888 Van Gogh rendering of a man in a black hat walking along a path in Arles, France, with his dog.
The curator’s alternative: an 18 carat, fully functioning, solid-gold toilet – an interactive work titled America that critics have described as pointed satire aimed at the excess of wealth in the US.
For a year, the Guggenheim had exhibited America – the creation of contemporary artist Maurizio Cattelan – in a public restroom for visitors to use.
But the exhibit was over and the toilet was available “should the president and first Lady have any interest in installing it in the White House,” Spector wrote in an email obtained by The Washington Post.
The artist “would like to offer it to the White House for a long-term loan”, wrote Spector, who has been critical of Trump.
“It is, of course, extremely valuable and somewhat fragile, but we would provide all the instructions for its installation and care.”
Sarah Eaton, a Guggenheim spokesperson, confirmed that Spector sent the email on September 15 to Donna Hayashi Smith of the White House’s office of the curator.
Spector, who has worked at the museum for 29 years, was unavailable to comment on her offer, Eaton said.
Cattelan, reached by phone in New York, declined to reveal the cost of the gold it took to create America, though it has been estimated to have been more than $1 million (R11.9m).
Cattelan described the golden toilet “as 1% art for the 99%”. “Whatever you eat, a $200 lunch or a $2 hot dog, the results are the same, toilet-wise,” he has said.
It was not clear how the White House responded to the offer. – The Washington Post