Have we finally found out who stole Cattelan's golden toilet?

In September 2019, Maurizio Cattelan's America - the famous toilet made of more than 100 kilograms of gold, worth more than 5 million euros-was stolen from the exhibition Victory is not an option, dedicated to the Italian artist and just opened at Blenheim Palace, England. The exhibition's inauguration had been held just before the theft: according to local police, the toilet-which could be freely used by visitors-was stolen a couple of hours after the event ended, ending past midnight. The theft had also caused damage to the room where the work was on display, a private bathroom formerly used by Churchill, who was born and raised in that same residence. The toilet, being fully functional, was in fact connected to the building's plumbing system. Two people had been arrested immediately after the robbery, then three more the following month, while earlier this year news had come out that the judiciary was on the verge of indicting seven. In the end, however, all suspects were always released due to lack of evidence.

Where did Cattelan's golden toilet go?

A turning point on the theft of America seems to have been reached recently: for the first time, four men have been formally indicted for the incident, and they will have to appear in an Oxford court on Nov. 28. They are between 35 and 39 years old, and are all variously accused of stealing the work. At the moment, however, it is not known what happened to the golden toilet - of which there are two other versions anyway. Investigators have always said that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to recover it, since it is unlikely that it was not melted down shortly after the robbery to make gold bars from it. Although Cattelan following the incident had wondered who was«so stupid to steal a toilet?», an expert in art and antique theft had told the New York Times to strongly doubt that anyone had taken it for its artistic relevance, and not «because it was a big lump of gold». At one point it had even gone so far as to suggest that it was all a staged event organized by Cattelan himself, who-although he confirmed from the outset that he had nothing to do with it-had done such performances in the past. In 1996, for example, he organized a robbery in an Amsterdam gallery, then presented the works as his own. The aim of the performance, titled Another fucking readymade: works from a stolen exhibition, was to reason about the idea of the legitimacy of "theft" - understood as inspiration, quotation or plagiarism - within art circuits, but approaching the issue from the real point of view.

The story of America

Cattelan's artistic production has always been irreverent and provocative, and America was also going in this direction. The golden toilet aimed to denounce, reflect and at the same time be ironic with respect to the inequalities of society: «Whatever you eat, a two-hundred-dollar lunch or a two-dollar hot dog, the results are the same, toilet-wise», had commented on the artist. Before it was short-lived at Blenheim Palace, America between September 2016 and August 2017 had been exhibited in a gender-neutral bathroom at the Guggenheim in New York. In this case, however, the toilet was controlled by a guard placed near the bathroom entrance door. The work's arrival in England is curious and has something to do with Donald Trump. The former Republican president asked the Guggenheim to loan Van Gogh's painting Landscape with Snow. It is common for U.S. presidents to propose to the country's major museums that they be allowed to take paintings to decorate the White House for a certain period of time (Obama did it too, for example). In this case, however, the New York museum declined Trump's request, and curator Nancy Spector offered Cattelan's toilet, which was on display at the same time, as a counterproposal. Trump in turn declined, so the Italian artist decided to later grant the work to the Blenheim Palace exhibition, from which it was stolen within a few days.