An 18-karat gold toilet by Maurizio Cattelan was stolen from the Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, England, this weekend. Titled America, the work was part of “Victory Is Not an Option,” the first UK solo exhibition by Cattelan in more than twenty years. The piece has an estimated worth about five million dollars.
The New York Times reported that the police said that the working toilet was taken early Saturday and that the thieves caused “significant damage and flooding” to the building, a heritage site and the birthplace of Winston Churchill.
"America was the 1 percent for the 99 percent, and I hope it still is," the artist told the newspaper, "I want to be positive and think the robbery is a kind of Robin Hood-inspired action." The notion that it might be a prank would fit in well with the artist's larger practice.
The toilet gained infamy last year when Nancy Spector, the chief curator of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, offered it to the US President and First Lady, Donald and Melania Trump, in lieu of a van Gogh painting that they had asked to borrow.
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