A fully functioning, used golden toilet, titled ‘America’ that was once stolen from a British palace, has been put up for auction at Sotheby’s with a guide price of $10 million.
Billionaire New York Mets owner Stephen Cohen purchased the 18-karat throne, unveiled in 2016 by Italian conceptual artist Maurizio Cattelan, from the Marian Goodman Gallery in 2017.
The 103-kilo participatory piece was installed as an actual public toilet in the Guggenheim in New York before being flushed out into the open last week, when a press release from Sotheby’s lifted the lid on the artwork’s listing in its fall contemporary art sale.
The auction house is hoping for a level of buzz similar to Cattelan’s previous work, ‘Comedian’, a duct-taped banana that sold for $6.2 million last year.
Five anonymous experts confirmed to the outlet that Cohen is the consignor for the auction. However, both Sotheby’s and the Marian Goodman Gallery declined to comment on the specifics of the transaction.
Cohen is currently the chairman and CEO of Point72, an asset management firm known for investing in various sectors, including entertainment and pharmaceuticals. He has a notable art collection featuring works that blend humor with political commentary, such as a painting by Jasper Johns and a shark suspended in formaldehyde by Damien Hirst.
The golden toilet has a controversial history. An identical piece was famously offered to the White House during Donald Trump’s first term in 2016 as an alternative to a requested Van Gogh painting. The sculpture first captured public attention when it was displayed at the Guggenheim Museum, drawing over 100,000 visitors eager for the unique experience.
It made headlines again in 2019 when it was stolen from Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, England, in a smash-and-grab heist that took thieves less than five minutes and resulted in water flooding the historic site. While the original piece’s whereabouts remain unclear, the version being auctioned is the only existing copy.
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