Gold toilet stolen: Dieves of 18-carat toilet from Churchill’s house

The work was called “America”: a fully functional toilet made of solid gold, for the first time installed in the New York Guggenheim Museum in autumn 2016. It was the comment by the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan for the obscene wealth of the international art collector scene and for grotesque material inequality of late capitalism. The work was a highlight of the museum’s collection; More than 100,000 visitors used the noble thunder bar there before traveling to Great Britain as part of a hiking exhibition.

Neither the hygiene factor nor the artistic aspect of the toilet seemed to be interested in five thieves that broke into the Benheim Palace manor house in the early morning of September 14, 2019 to steal the 98 kg object. In a campaign that is one of the three -best arts of art in history, the men first dashed through a secured wooden goal of the property in the English county of Oxfordshire, then broke through a window into the toilet with a window where the golden toilet was firmly installed, and tore the object from the ground and the wall of the listed palace. All of this in less than five minutes.

On one that was shown this week in the trial against three of the thieves in Oxford, two hooded men roll the work of art to the car while a third bears the golden toilet glasses. When the robbers hoist their prey into the trunk of a blue VW Golf, the car drops slightly under the enormous weight of the object. The safety personnel of the palace, caught cold from the robbers, had desperately ran after the car -racing car, the jurors heard in the courtroom. Only the toilet roll and the rinsing mechanism have left the thieves behind.

Cattelan’s work, a crowd puller in the Guggenheim Museum in New York, was the main attraction of the exhibition in Blenheim Palace, which was just opened at the time of theft. With 8.6 million euros, the work of art was insured, the robbery of which the men had planned meticulously. On one of at least two reconnaissance missions, one of the accused, Michael J. from Oxford, had visited the palace five days before the opening of the exhibition with his partner, the court heard. There he spied on the silent place, a few days before the solid gold toilet was installed there. The co-accused Frederick S. from Ascot, Berkshire, and Bora G. from West London are accused of having processed and forwarded the stolen well.

Since the robbery five years ago, there has been no trace of the noble abort. The police assume that the work, the value of which is estimated at just under 5.8 million euros, was dismantled and melted down. At the time of theft, the market price of the gold used was included. The public prosecutor ensured evidence that the accused had negotiated a kilo price of 31,000 euros for the gold. Bora G., who ran a business in London’s Juwelierstraße Hatton Garden, made a profit of 3600 euros with every kilo sold, the public prosecutor claims. The three defendants did not guilty.

Artist Maurizio Cattelan first thought the theft was a joke. “Who is so stupid to steal a toilet?” He said in 2019. It was absurd to steal a work that omitted the obscenity of the one percent super -rich in the world.

The Guggenheim Museum demonstrated how effective art can be as a subtle insult to the powerful in January 2018. Donald Trump, then as now residents of the White House in Washington DC, wanted to borrow a van Gogh painting from the Guggenheim. Unfortunately, this was not possible, Museum Director Nancy Spector regretted and instead offered him golden toilet. Trump declined. He probably already had one.