August 31, 2017
Guggenheim Museum/Maurizio Cattelan
The golden toilet at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City.
If you are looking for plans this Labor Day weekend, may I suggest paying about $20 for a Megabus from Philadelphia to New York, paying an additional $25 to enter the Guggenheim Museum and then relieving yourself after your long journey on a toilet made of solid gold?
That's right, just enter the museum’s bathroom, and go No. 1 — or No. 2, if needed! — in a can made of 18-karat gold, fit for the king or queen that you are.
The toilet, a work from artist Maurizio Cattelan, can be interpreted a number of ways, according to the museum: a statement about income inequality, the presidency of Donald Trump, the "equation between excrement and art," etc.
Most importantly, you can actually use it:
The gold toilet — a cipher for the excesses of affluence — has been available for all to use in the privacy of one of the Guggenheim’s single-stall, gender-neutral bathrooms. More than one hundred thousand people have waited patiently in line for the opportunity to commune with art and with nature.
So go ahead, use the golden toilet like Trevor White, a "gold toilet user," according to The Associated Press.
But hurry, as it will come out of view at the museum on Sept. 15.
