London: A solid-gold toilet, once offered to US President Donald Trump, is set to be installed in one of the UK’s grandest country houses which will be open to public for use, according to a media report. The 18-carat gold artwork, ‘America’ by Maurizio Cattelan, will be plumbed into a bathroom at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, near the room in which Winston Churchill was born, the Guardian reported.
The gold-toilet made headlines in the US after the Guggenheim museum offered it to the US President Trump instead of the Van Gogh painting he requested. Visitors will be able to admire and use the toilet, an experience that will be new even to the Marlborough family who have enjoyed lives of luxury at Blenheim for over 300 years, it said.
“Despite being born with a silver spoon in my mouth I have never had a …on a golden toilet, so I look forward to it,” said Edward Spencer-Churchill, the current Duke of Marlborough’s half-brother and founder of the Blenheim Art Foundation.
“It will be an installed, working, usable toilet.”
There will be enhanced security, Spencer-Churchill said, but whether there will be a queuing system or booked slots has yet to be decided. And there is the question of how long people can stay in the toilet. “I’m not sure I can answer that question yet,” he added. “We’d like people to enjoy their time in there without giving them too much time, if that makes sense.”
When the artwork was installed in the Guggenheim in New York in 2016 people queued for about two hours before being allowed in one at a time. Cleaners sanitised the toilet every 15 minutes. An estimated 100,000 people visited the installation and posted a blizzard of selfies and toilet humour on Twitter.
