Trump wanted Van Gogh, offered gold toilet instead
CHEEKY GUGGENHEIM CURATOR DENIES PRESIDENT
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 Trump 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 entitled “America” that critics have described as pointed satire aimed at the excess of wealth in this country.
For a year, the Guggenheim 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 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 entitled “The Smoker.” The Obamas preferred abstract art, choosing works by Mark Rothko and Jasper Johns.
On the face of it, 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.
Cattelan’s “America” caused something of a sensation after the Guggenheim unveiled it in 2016 and more than a few headlines.
“WE’RE NO. 1! (And No. 2)” was the New York Post’s front page offering, the huge lettering over a photograph of the toilet. The tabloid’s coverage included a reporter’s first-person account (“I Rode the Guggenheim’s Golden Throne”) and a photograph of that reporter seated on the toilet (reading his own newspaper, naturally).
The museum posted a uniformed security guard outside the bathroom to monitor the “more than 100,000 people” who waited “patiently in line for the opportunity to commune with art and with nature,” Spector wrote in a Guggenheim blog post last year. Every 15 minutes or so, a crew would arrive with specially chosen wipes to clean the gold.
Cattelan, 57, is well-known in the art world for his satirical and provocative creations, including a sculpture depicting Pope John Paul II lying on the ground after being hit by a meteorite. Another was a child-sized sculpture of an adult Hitler, kneeling. The artist’s works have sold for millions.
Cattelan has resisted interpreting his work, telling interviewers he would leave that to his audience. He conceived of the gold toilet before Trump’s candidacy for president, though he has acknowledged he may have been influenced by the mogul’s almost unavoidable place in American culture.
“It was probably in the air,” he told a Guggenheim blogger in 2016 as “America” went on display.
Cattelan has also suggested he had in mind the wealth that permeates aspects of society, describing the golden toilet “as one per cent art for the ninety-nine per cent.”
“Whatever you eat, a $200 lunch or a $2 hotdog, the results are the same, toiletwise,” he has said.
The curator, in blog posts and on social media, has made plain her political leanings.
“This must be the first day of our revolution to take back our beloved country from hatred, racism and intolerance,” Spector wrote on Instagram a day after Trump’s 2016 election. Her post was accompanied by a Robert Mapplethorpe photo of a frayed American flag.
“Don’t mourn, organize,” the curator wrote.