In 2018, Donald Trump wanted to have a work by Vincent van Gogh in the White House. His team contacted the Guggenheim Museum in New York to request the loan of Landscape with Snow, a painting by the Dutch artist.
The museum’s response was far less conventional than he had probably expected.
The Guggenheim’s then chief curator, Nancy Spector, explained that the work was not available for loan, but offered an alternative: “America”, an installation by Maurizio Cattelan consisting of a fully functional toilet made of 18-karat gold.
The piece, which weighed more than 100 kilos of gold, had been installed in one of the museum’s bathrooms and could be used by visitors. Cattelan presented it as a work that referenced luxury, inequality, and the relationship between art and money.
Trump ultimately did not receive the Van Gogh. Nor is there any record that he accepted the Guggenheim’s unusual alternative.
The episode became one of those stories that would be hard to imagine if it had not actually happened: a U.S. president asked for a Van Gogh and ended up receiving an offer that could, quite literally, leave him sitting on gold.