01  The Guggenheim declined the White House’s request to borrow a Vincent van Gogh painting, offering Maurizio Cattelan’s solid gold toilet in its stead.

(via the Washington Post)

The New York museum’s emailed response, dated September 15th, was reported by the Post Thursday. Written by the Guggenheim’s chief curator, Nancy Spector, the email references the White House’s desire to hang van Gogh’s Landscape With Snow (1888) in President Trump and the First Lady’s private quarters. Spector goes on to explain that, due to the work’s inclusion in an upcoming show at the Guggenheim Bilbao, the request cannot be accomodated. Instead, she proposes an alternative: a fully-functioning, 18-karat-gold toilet that had recently been on view at the museum in a fifth-floor bathroom. The work, titled America, was offered up by its creator, Italian artist and provocateur Cattelan. “The work beautifully channels the history of 20th-century avant-garde art by referencing Marcel Duchamp’s famous urinal of 1917,” Spector writes. The Guggenheim confirmed the email’s authenticity; the White House has not commented on the exchange.