In September 2016, New York City’s prestigious Guggenheim museum welcomed a new masterpiece, and completely rearranged the place to display it. They cleared all other exhibits of the fourth-floor rotunda and left a single-stall restroom. In that room was the piece of art: a solid gold but fully functional toilet. Created by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, it’s an exact replica of the Guggenheim’s other toilets, only rendered in 18-karat gold (with a brass handle that’s gold-plated). The name of the piece: America. Is that some heavy-handed dig? Not at all. Cattelan said it’s “1 percent art for the 99 percent.”
But speaking of the 1 percent, and dudes who think stuff made out of solid gold is cool: Donald Trump. In September 2017 (and we’re only hearing about this now), the president asked the Guggenheim if they could loan out a piece from their collection, Landscape With the Snow by Vincent Van Gogh, to have on display in his private quarters in the White House. It’s a simple painting of a man and his dog in a field. Instead, Guggenheim chief curator Nancy Spector offered up a “long-term loan” of America. In other words, Spector suggested a toilet to Trump because she does not think very highly of him. In a blog post called “Maurizio Cattelan’s Golden Toilet in the Time of Trump,” Spector linked the gold toilet—which was ultimately used by 100,000 people—to Trump, calling it “a cipher for the excesses of affluence.”