The Guggenheim didn’t have a Van Gogh painting to offer the White House, but they did present President Trump with a golden throne.
The Washington Post obtained correspondence between curator Nancy Spector, and Donna Hayashi Smith, of the White House’s Office of the Curator, in which Spector said the president and Melania Trump couldn’t ‘borrow’ a Vincent Van Gogh piece for the White House residence.
They had requested the work ‘Landscape with Snow,’ a muted and solemn painting of a man walking through an Arles field in winter.
There was another option though, a fully functioning 18-karat gold toilet, named ‘America,’ by artist Maurizio Cattelan, who was making a point about the country’s excesses of wealth.
The curator of the Guggenheim Museum in New York offered this 18-karat gold, fully functioning potty to President Trump
The gold toilet, an installation piece entitled ‘America,’ attracted more than 100,000 fannies during its time at the museum. The curator offered to give it to the White House in an email obtained by the Washington Post
The toilet is the creation of artist Maurizio Cattelan, who wanted to make a point about the excesses of wealth in the country
For the last year, the golden potty had been on display in a fifth floor restroom of the museum.
However, ‘fortuitously’ the toilet needed a new home after being ‘installed in one of our public restrooms for all to use in a wonderful act of generosity,’ the curator wrote the White House, even including an image of the toilet with her offering.
More than 100,000 people waited in line to use the john during the installation, the museum indicated.
‘[S]hould the President and First Lady have any interest in installing it in the White House,’ Spector wrote.
The artist, Spector said, ‘would like to offer it to the White House for a long-term loan.’
‘It is, of course, extremely valuable and somewhat fragile, but we would provide all the instructions for its installation and care,’ Spector, who has criticized Trump in the past, told the White House official.
When the Washington Post reached out to Cattelan, the creator of the piece, he told the paper to talk to the Guggenheim about his offer.
‘It’s a very delicate subject,’ he said.
‘What’s the point of our life? Everything seems absurd until we die and then it makes sense,’ he answered when asked what the takeaway should be from the toilet and why he wanted to give it to the Trumps.
He also wouldn’t say how much the potty cost to make, though the newspaper cited estimates of more than $1 million.
‘I don’t want to be rude, I have to go,’ the artist told the Post, hanging up.
It’s not unusual for the president to request pieces of art from the country’s museums to hang in the White House.
The New York Times chronicled the 45 pieces of art the Obamas borrowed from institutions in 2009, President Obama’s first year in office.
Trump’s predecessor chose a number of abstract pieces and also works from African-American artists.