A functional toilet made of solid gold called ‘America’ may soon open to public at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, reports said.
Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan replaced a ‘Kohler’ toilet in one of the restrooms in the museum with a 18-karat-gold working replica.
According to the museum the artwork has made “ available to the public an extravagant luxury product seemingly intended for the 1 percent”.
“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 a work of art,” read the museum’s description.
“There’s the risk that people will think of it as a joke, maybe, but I don’t see it as a joke,” Cattelan told The New York Times in an interview earlier this year.
According to the article, the toilet’s name was inspired by Franz Kafka’s novel Amerika.
The restroom will be available for all museum visitors.