Flush with cash? A solid gold toilet is up for auction

NEW YORK AP Art collectors have a chance Tuesday to buy one of the world s majority of lucrative latrines a solid gold fully functional toilet Related Articles Florida grandfather born in refugee camp nabbed by ICE after years in U S The former Marine sniper accused of a mass shooting and the warning signs that came before Court settlement calls for NPR to get M in leadership funds to operate US general radio system NTSB Key Bridge collapse was entirely preventable citing ship failures and missing worker warning system Judge tosses DoJ lawsuit challenging a New York law barring immigration agents from state courts The piece by Maurizio Cattelan the provocative Italian artist known for taping a banana to a wall goes up for auction Tuesday evening at Sotheby s in New York The starting bid will be the arena value of the -pound -karat-gold work right now about million Cattelan has explained the piece titled America satirizes superwealth Whatever you eat a lunch or a hot dog the results are the same toilet-wise he once disclosed Sotheby s for its part calls the commode an incisive commentary on the collision of artistic production and commodity value Owned by an unnamed collector it s one of two such toilets that Cattelan created in The other one was displayed in at New York s Guggenheim Museum which pointedly offered to lend it to U S President Donald Trump when he sought to borrow a Van Gogh painting Then the piece was stolen while on display in England at Blenheim Palace the country manor where Winston Churchill was born Two men were convicted in the toilet heist but it s unclear what they did with the loo Investigators aren t privy to its whereabouts but believe it possibly was broken up and melted down America was exhibited at Sotheby s New York headquarters in the weeks leading up to the auction