Trump asked to borrow Van Gogh for White House: Guggenheim offered gold toilet instead

Maurizio Cattelan's "America", is a solid gold, fully functioning toilet that was installed in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 2016. Photo / Courtesy of Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

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 the 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 entitled 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.

The artist "would like to offer it to the White House for a long-term loan," wrote Spector, who has been critical of Trump. "It is, of course, extremely valuable and somewhat fragile, but we would provide all the instructions for its installation and care."

Guggenheim spokeswoman Sara Eaton confirmed that Spector wrote the email last September 15 to Donna Hayashi Smith of the White House's Office of the Curator. Spector, who has worked in various capacities at the museum for 29 years, was unavailable to talk about her offer, Eaton said.

The White House did not respond to inquiries about the matter.

Maurizio Cattelan's "America", is a solid gold, fully functioning toilet that was installed in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 2016. Photo / Courtesy of Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

Cattelan, reached by phone in New York, referred questions about the toilet to the Guggenheim, saying with a chuckle, "it's a very delicate subject". Asked to explain the meaning of his creation and why he offered it to the Trumps, he said, "What's the point of our life? Everything seems absurd until we die and then it makes sense."

He declined to reveal the cost of the gold it took to create America, though it has been estimated to have been more than $1 million.

"I don't want to be rude, I have to go," the artist said, before hanging up.

It is common for presidents and first ladies to borrow major works of art to decorate the Oval Office, the first family's residence and various rooms at the White House. The Smithsonian loaned the Kennedys a Eugene Delacroix painting entitled The Smoker. The Obamas preferred abstract art, choosing works by Mark Rothko and Jasper Johns.

On the face of it, President Trump might appreciate an artist's rendering of a gilded toilet, given his well-documented history of installing gold-plated fixtures in his residences, properties and even his airplane. But the president is also a well-known germophobe, and it's an open question whether he would accept a previously used toilet, 18-karat or otherwise.

Cattelan's "America" caused something of a sensation after the Guggenheim unveiled it in 2016 and more than a few headlines.

"WE'RE NO. 1! (And No. 2)" was the New York Post's front page offering, the huge lettering over a photograph of the toilet. The tabloid's coverage included a reporter's first-person account ("I Rode the Guggenheim's Golden Throne") and a photograph of that reporter seated on the toilet (reading his own newspaper, naturally).

The museum posted a uniformed security guard outside the bathroom to monitor the "more than 100,000 people" who waited "patiently in line for the opportunity to commune with art and with nature," Spector wrote in a Guggenheim blog post lasy year. Every 15 minutes or so, a crew would arrive with specially-chosen wipes to clean the gold.

Cattelan, 57, is well-known in the art world for his satirical and provocative creations, including a sculpture depicting Pope John Paul II lying on the ground after being hit by a meteorite. Another was a child-sized sculpture of an adult Hitler, kneeling. The artist's works have sold for millions of dollars.

Cattelan has resisted interpreting his work, telling interviewers he would leave that to his audience. He conceived of the gold toilet prior to Trump's candidacy for president, though he has acknowledged that he may have been influenced by the mogul's almost unavoidable place in American culture.

"It was probably in the air," he told a Guggenheim blogger in 2016 as "America" went on display.

Cattelan has also suggested that he had in mind the wealth that permeates aspects of society, describing the golden toilet "as one-percent art for the ninety-nine percent." "Whatever you eat, a two-hundred-dollar lunch or a two-dollar hot dog, the results are the same, toilet-wise," he has said.

Cattelan is not the first artist to immortalise a bathroom fixture. In 1917, Marcel Duchamp, the French Dada-ist, unveiled "Fountain," a porcelain urinal that was rejected when he initially submitted it for exhibition. A replica is owned by the Tate galleries in London.

At the Guggenheim, when Cattelan raised the notion of a gold toilet in mid-2015, Spector, the curator, embraced the idea and got approval from the museum's director, Richard Armstrong. Asked if Armstrong supported the curator's offer of the toilet to the White House, the Guggenheim's spokeswoman replied, "We have nothing further to add."

The curator, in blog posts and on social media, has made plain her political leanings.

"This must be the first day of our revolution to take back our beloved country from hatred, racism and intolerance," Spector wrote on Instagram a day after Trump's 2016 election. Her post was accompanied by a Robert Mapplethorpe photo of a frayed American flag.

"Don't mourn, organise," the curator wrote.

Last August, as the Cattelan's "America" was approaching its final weeks, Spector wrote on the Guggenheim blog that Trump had "resonated so loudly" during the "sculpture's time at the museum. She described his term as having been "marked by scandal and defined by the deliberate rollback of countless civil liberties, in addition to climate change denial that puts our planet in peril."

A month later, the curator crafted her response to the White House's request for Van Gogh's "Landscape with Snow." She explained that the painting - "prohibited from travel except for the rarest of occasions" - was on its way to be exhibited at the Guggenheim's museum in Bilbao, Spain, and then it would return to New York "for the foreseeable future."

"Fortuitously," Spector wrote, Cattelan's "America" was available after having been "installed in one of our public restrooms for all to use in a wonderful act of generosity."

She included with the email a photograph of the toilet "for your reference."

"We are sorry not to be able to accommodate your original request," the curator concluded, "but remain hopeful that this special offer may be of interest."