A Throne for a King: NYC Museum to Install Solid Gold Toilet

You might call the latest addition to the Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan an “interactive” piece. It will not be hung on the walls or laid ceremoniously on a bust in the center of a studio. It will be installed in early May in one of the bathrooms for the workaday use of the museum’s patrons.

Maurizio Cattelan, one of the world’s wealthiest artists, according to the New York Times, will unveil his fully functional toilet made out of 18-karat solid gold.

The piece, which serves as both a comment on and example of the insane excesses of the art world, summons associations with the Occupy movement and the national debate over the concentration of wealth, according to the museum’s curator. The Guardian‘s Jonathan Jones called the crapper a “pungent symbol” of “the excess and inequality that scar our society.”

Also it’s just, you know, a toilet.

“There’s the risk that people will think of it as a joke, maybe, but I don’t see it as a joke,” Cattelan told the Times.

[image: Not Cattelan’s toilet (via shutterstock)]

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!