T his November, visitors to Sotheby’s new Breuer Building in New York will find a toilet worth its weight in gold. Maurizio Cattelan’s America (2016), a fully functional toilet cast in solid 18-karat gold, will be installed in a bathroom at the Breuer Building, and visitors will be invited to view America one-by-one in an intimate viewing experience. However, the fully functioning sculpture will remain unused for the safety and security of the artwork.
First unveiled at the Guggenheim Museum, where over 100,000 people lined up for the most luxurious bathroom break in art history, America became a global sensation—and later, a true-crime headline when another version was stolen from Blenheim Palace in 2019. The present work is the only remaining version of this sculpture.
Now, as it heads to auction in The Now and Contemporary Evening Sale on 18 November with a starting bid equal to the price of its gold (around $10 million), it leaves one lingering question: where does value end and irony begin?
