The Trumps wanted a Van Gogh for the White House. The museum offered a US$1m golden toilet titled ‘America’
The response – what appears to be a spectacularly highbrow diss – came from the Guggenheim’s curator, Nancy Spector
The emailed response from the Guggenheim’s chief curator to the White House was polite but firm: the museum could not accommodate a request to “borrow” a painting by Vincent van Gogh for President Donald and Melania Trump’s private living quarters.
Instead, wrote curator Nancy Spector, another piece was available, one that was nothing like “Landscape with Snow,” the lovely 1888 Van Gogh rendering of a man in a black hat walking along a path in Arles with his dog.
The curator’s alternative: an 18-karat, fully functioning, solid gold toilet – an interactive work titled “America” that critics have described as pointed satire aimed at the excess of wealth in this country.
For a year, the Guggenheim had exhibited “America” – the creation of contemporary artist Maurizio Cattelan – in a public restroom on the museum’s fifth floor for visitors to use.
But the exhibit was over and the toilet was available “should the President and First Lady have any interest in installing it in the White House,” Spector wrote in an email obtained by The Washington Post.
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