Trumps wanted a Van Gogh; museum suggested a toilet
offered Guggenheim an 18-karat, curator fully functioning, solid gold toilet, an interactive work titled America, for the White House.
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 lovely 1888 Van Gogh rendering of a man in a black hat walking along a path in Arles with his dog.
The curator’s alternative: an 18-karat, fully functioning, solid gold toilet — an interactive work titled America that critics have described as pointed satire aimed at the excess of wealth in this country.
For a year, the Guggenheim had exhibited America — the creation of contemporary artist Maurizio Cattelan — in a public restroom on the museum’s fifth floor 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.”
Sara Eaton, a Guggenheim spokeswoman, confirmed that Spector wrote the email last Sept. 15 to Donna Hayashi Smith of the White House’s Office of the Curator. Spector, who has worked in various capacities at the museum for 29 years, was unavailable to talk about her offer, Eaton said.
The White House did not respond to inquiries about the matter.
Cattelan, reached by phone in New York, referred questions about the toilet to the Guggenheim, saying with a chuckle, “It’s a very delicate subject.” Asked to explain the meaning of his creation and why he offered it to the Trumps, he said, “What’s the point of our life? Everything seems absurd until we die and then it makes sense.”
He 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.
“I don’t want to be rude, I have to go,” the artist said, before hanging up.
It is common for presidents and first ladies to borrow major works of art to decorate the Oval Office, the first family’s residence and various rooms at the White House. The Smithsonian loaned the Kennedys a Eugene Delacroix painting titled The Smoker. The Obamas preferred abstract art, choosing works by Mark Rothko and Jasper Johns.
On the face of it, President Trump might appreciate an artist’s rendering of a gilded toilet, given his well-documented history of installing gold-plated fixtures in his residences, properties and even his airplane. But the president is also a well-known germophobe, and it’s an open question whether he would accept a previously used toilet, 18-karat or otherwise.