Guggenheim To Put Lid On Golden Toilet

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — New Yorkers only have a few more weeks to pay a visit to the Guggenheim Museum's golden toilet – and yes, you can do more than just look.

The fully-functional luxury commode has been in a cubicle of the Upper East Side's unisex restroom for the past year, with visitors invited to use it as they would the regular porcelain fixtures. Named "America" by its Italian creator Maurizio Cattelan, the art work will be flushed for the last time Sept. 15, the museum said.

Cattelan came out of a self-imposed retirement of five years to design "America," — a solid gold, 18-karat toilet that occupies one of the Guggenheim's single-stall bathrooms.

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"The new work makes available to the public an extravagant luxury product seemingly intended for the 1 percent," a museum said when the exhibition opened.

"Its participatory nature, in which viewers are invited to make use of the fixture individually and privately, allows for an experience of unprecedented intimacy with an artwork."

The creation of "America," pitched to the museum by Cattelan in 2015, coincided with the rise of Donald Trump to the United States presidency.

The toilet was constructed using millions of dollars worth of gold, the Guggenheim's Artistic Director Nancy Spector wrote in in a blog post. Whether you view "America" as a work of art, or simply an overly-luxurious bathroom, the lines to "participate" are sure to be long prior to its Sept. 15 departure.

So far, more than 100,000 people have experienced "unprecedented intimacy" with "America," wrote Spector.

Photo by Kris McKay, Copyright Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation