NY museum offered gold toilet to Trumps after request to borrow Van Gogh painting

The Trumps wanted to borrow a Van Gogh painting from a New York museum but were instead offered a solid-gold toilet made by an Italian artist.

A fully functioning solid gold toilet, made by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, is going into public use at the Guggenheim Museum in New York (L) Source: Getty, AAP

New York's Guggenheim Museum offered to lend an 18-karat gold toilet to President Donald Trump after the White House asked to borrow a painting by Vincent Van Gogh, the Washington Post reports.

The museum's chief curator offered to loan the toilet, which had been used by tens of thousands of visitors, in a September 15 email to a Trump administration official, the newspaper reported.

A fully functioning solid gold toilet, made by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, is going into public use at the Guggenheim Museum in New York (Getty) Source: Getty

A Guggenheim spokeswoman declined immediate comment on the Washington Post report and White House officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

It was not clear how the White House responded to the Guggenheim curator's offer.

The piece, by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan's, is an 18-karat gold, fully functioning toilet. It is called "America."

It was put on display in 2016 in a single-stall bathroom at the Guggenheim, where it was used in private luxury by more than 100,000 people, according to a Guggenheim blog post. The museum said the object, which was on display for a year, "skewers social complacencies" and the extravagances of the wealthy.

The offer came in response to a White House request to borrow the painting "Landscape with Snow" by 19th century Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh, for installation at the president and first lady's private living quarters, the Washington Post reported. The request for the painting was declined.

Guggenheim chief curator Nancy Spector had previously written about the toilet in a 2017 blog post, in which she took swipes at the president. She wrote that the "Trump reference" inherent in the gold toilet resonated with people "during the sculpture's time at the Guggenheim."

"When the sculpture came off view on September 15, Trump had been in office for 238 days, a term marked by scandal and defined by the deliberate rollback of countless civil liberties, in addition to climate-change denial that puts our planet in peril," Spector wrote.