Toilet for Trump

From The Independent

I found this story hilarious.

Trump and Trump wife Melania wanted a painting for their bedroom.

So they asked the Guggenheim for a Van Gogh.

And the response was classic.

The White House apparently contacted the Guggenheim Museum in New York and asked for the loan of Van Gogh’s 1888 Landscape With Snow. The museum wrote back to say it could not loan the item but instead offered an 18 karat gold sculpture by Maurizio Cattelan of a functioning toilet.

The piece, America, designed as “a cipher for the excesses of affluence” and the creation of which was inspired by Mr Trump's decision to run for the White House, had been on display at the museum where countless thousands of museum visitors made use of it.

“We are sorry not to be able to accommodate your original request, but remain hopeful that this special offer may be of interest,” curator Nancy Spector wrote in an email to the White House, according to the Washington Post.

The museum’s online notes accompanying the sculpture, say that “like all of Cattelan’s most complex works, this sculpture is laden with possible meanings”. They also say the sculpture was inspired by Mr Trump's decision to run for the White House. They say that more than 100,000 people made use of the toilet when it was on display.

“The equation between excrement and art has long been mined by neo-Marxist thinkers who question the relationship between labour and value,” add the notes.