Golden throne

The Art Museum That Offered Donald Trump a Solid Gold Toilet

He asked the Guggenheim for a van Gogh. He got a toilet named America instead.
Image may contain Donald Trump Indoors Room Human Person Sink Faucet Bathroom and Toilet
Left, by Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images; right, by Christina Horsten/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images.

What do you give the man who has everything? Well, if you’re the Guggenheim and that man is Donald Trump, you offer up a golden toilet. According to The Washington Post, the White House e-mailed the New York museum asking if it could borrow van Gogh’s Landscape with Snow painting for the private residences of the president and First Lady. Curator Nancy Spector replied that the painting was unavailable, but she did offer Trump the 18-karat golden toilet titled America.

The functioning toilet, created by Maurizio Cattelan, spent a year on the museum’s fifth floor in a public restroom for visitors to use. The toilet is supposed to represent America’s wealth and excess, and seems like it would line up nicely with Trump’s taste. His $100 million penthouse in Manhattan is covered in gold trim, decorations, and furniture. In fact, it would be more surprising to learn that Trump didn’t already own a golden toilet.

If the White House were to accept the offer—which, granted, seems unlikely—it appears that the Trumps might not even be around to witness the gift’s installation. While Donald Trump is off at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Melania Trump made an unexpected trip out of D.C. to their Mar-a-Lago residence in West Palm Beach on Thursday. She made another unannounced visit prior to leaving, taking a private tour of the Holocaust Memorial Museum. Before these outings, the First Lady hadn’t been seen in public for 10 days, in the wake of the allegations made by porn star Stormy Daniels, who claimed to have had an affair with Trump in 2006.

And what’s the point in having a solid gold toilet if it’s just going to sit in a corner collecting dust? When The Washington Post asked Cattelan why he offered his work to the president, he replied, “What’s the point of our life? Everything seems absurd until we die and then it makes sense.”

Well said!