It was a bold bowl move. Orlando-based Ripley Entertainment purchased the 18-karat gold toilet at auction for $12.1 million. This is the most money the company has ever spent to add to its vast collection of oddities.
Ripley acquired the fully functioning toilet at a Sotheby’s New York auction earlier this month.
“We were the only bidders,” said Suzanne Smagala-Potts, Ripley’s senior manager. “This was quite surprising as we expected it to fetch a higher price as the artist himself is very famous.”
The piece was one of three identical golden toilets created by Italian-born satirical visual artist Maurizio Cattelan. In 2016, one version was installed at New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, where more than 100,000 visitors lined up to use it like any other public facility. (People were assigned to spend five minutes in the Guggenheim Museum’s bathroom.)
The toilet, which caused a selfie sensation, was loaned to British tourist attraction Blenheim Palace, which hosts a contemporary art exhibition, in 2019, but was stolen within months.
“Like most authorities, we believe it was melted down for gold because it was never recovered,” Smagala-Potts said.
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The location of Cattelan’s third toilet is unknown, with the one recently purchased by Ripley being the only known surviving one.
Ripley has not yet decided where the toilet will be displayed. The company has dozens of attractions around the world, many of which are called “Oditoriums,” including one on International Drive in Orlando.
“This is a functional toilet and we are considering whether to put it on display (for use),” Smagala-Potts said. “Nothing is still out of the question.”
According to the Guggenheim Museum’s website, the New York installation there created an “unprecedented intimate experience with works of art.”
Mr. Cattelan, now 65, has a history of creating news-making art, including “The Comedian,” also known as a banana duct-taped to a wall, exhibited at Art Basel Miami in 2019.
“America” is the title he gave to the gold toilet.
“This may be a social thing, it may be a political thing, but I think overall it’s a cultural commentary,” Lucius Elliott, head of modern art marquee auctions at Sotheby’s, said in a video posted before the auction.
“This is a European artist painting a portrait of America: its decadence, its beauty, its rawness, and its complete domination over the entire Western world,” he said.
Ripley has previously sold Marilyn Monroe’s “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” gown for $4.8 million at auction, sold Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber for $450,000 and bought a box of chocolates from “Forrest Gump” for $25,000.
In the case of America, the raw materials themselves have a high value. A meltdown could cost the company about $10 million, Ripley said.
“This work is worth at least its weight in gold,” said David Galperin, vice chairman and head of contemporary art at Sotheby’s.
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