It’s not often that a request from the President of the United States gets pooh-poohed, much less with an actual reference to, well, poo poo. But such was the case last September when the Guggenheim Museum rejected Donald Trump’s attempt to borrow a priceless Vincent van Gogh painting, and offered as a consolation prize a fully functional, and very used, solid 18-karat gold toilet.
At some point last summer, POTUS asked the museum if he could borrow van Gogh’s “Landscape in the Snow” to decorate the private White House living quarters, the Washington Post reports. Unfortunately for Trump, in an emailed response printed in full by WAPO, the museum’s chief curator Nancy Spector blocked his request, because the painting is part of a collection prohibited from travel except under extremely rare occasions.
Instead, the Guggenheim offered Trump “America,” an 18-karat, fully functioning, solid gold toilet sculpted by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan that was displayed for use by visitors in a public restroom on the museum’s fifth floor from 2016 to 2017.
Just in case there’s any ambiguity, the Guggenheim says more than 100,000 people used the toilet while it was on display.
According to Spector, it was Cattelan himself who offered to loan the work, which satirizes the excesses of wealth, to the White House on a long term basis. ‘”We would be pleased to help facilitate this loan for the artist should the President and First Lady have any interest in installing it in the White House,” the email reads. “It is, of course, extremely valuable and somewhat fragile, but we would provide all the instructions for its installation and care.”
President Trump has not commented on the offer, but the day is still young and Twitter is open 24 hours a day.