| Rude assumptions. Given that her husband is a billionaire, if she’d wanted a gold toilet at the White House, he’d have ordered one from Tiffany. |
The curator at the Guggenheim responded to Trump’s request by offering to loan the White House a working toilet made of gold called "America," according to The Washington Post.
The gold commode was available "should the President and First Lady have any interest in installing it in the White House," curator Nancy Spector wrote in an email response to the White House, obtained by The Post.
According to the email, Trump had requested Van Gogh’s "Landscape with Snow," but that work was "prohibited from travel except for the rarest of occasions," Spector wrote. "We are sorry not to be able to accommodate your original request," Spector said, "but remain hopeful that this special offer may be of interest."
She included an illustration of the toilet, designed by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan. Cattelan "would like to offer it to the White House for a long-term loan," Spector, a vocal critic of President Donald Trump, said in the email.
The Guggenheim had displayed "America" for some time, allowing tens of thousands of visitors to use the gilded toilet,
| President Trump has remarked upon his germ fetish in the past, and they were going to give him a public toilet? How gauche. |
The museum had installed the toilet "for all to use in the privacy of one of the Guggenheim’s single-stall, gender-neutral bathrooms, Spector wrote in a blog post in 2017.
Lift lid.
Sit on seat. Or lift seat and stand facing device, if male.
Do what must be done, applying skills learnt as a toddler.
The toilet paper thing. One assumes the plumbing can handle it, so the residue needn’t be dropped into a dedicated trash can. (Ick.)
Stand up, step back, close lid, flush.
Hand washing is assumed, but is not a necessary step in the operation of this particular type of toilet.
The piece resonated in the Trump era, as Trump had become "synonymous with golden toilets," Spector wrote in the museum’s blog.
| Oh dear. Mr. Spector should have checked Snopes’ debunking of that Occupy Democrats meme back in 2016. |
Cattelan told The Post that the offer was "a very delicate subject." When a reporter asked why he offered the toilet to the Trumps, Cattelan said: "What’s the point of our life? Everything seems absurd until we die and then it makes sense."
Guggenheim Director: Richard Armstrong
To schedule a Guggenheim tour, call 212-423-3500