After making waves last year with Comedian – a banana taped to a wall that fetched US$6.2 million – Italian conceptual prankster Maurizio Cattelan returns to New York’s marquee fall auctions with what may be contemporary art’s most talked-about toilet.
On 18 November, Sotheby’s will offer America – a fully functioning, solid-gold toilet that drew some 100,000 visitors during its installation at the Guggenheim, then touted as a possible loan to the Trump White House, and later disappeared in a high-profile heist – in its Now & Contemporary Evening Auction.
For the first time in auction history, the starting bid will fluctuate with live gold prices right up until bidding begins. With gold hovering near record highs, the sculpture’s raw material alone is valued at around US$10.2 million, based on gold prices at the time of writing and its 223 pounds of 18-karat gold.
Sotheby’s believes this may be the only surviving edition of the work: one was stolen and never recovered, while another was never fabricated. Ahead of the sale, the sculpture will be on public view until 17 November, fittingly installed in a bathroom at Sotheby’s new Breuer Building headquarters – though this time, it’s strictly look-but-don’t-touch.
Chinese crypto-executive Justin Sun ate Comedian, having purchased it for US$6.2 million last year
Lot 109 | Maurizio Cattelan (b. 1960) | America, 101.2 kg of 18-karat gold
Executed in 2016, this work is number 2 from an edition of 3 plus 2 artist’s proofs
47 x 37.5 x 63.5 cm
Provenance:
- Marian Goodman Gallery, New York
- Acquired from the above in 2017 by the present owner
Estimate Upon Request
*The final estimate and starting bid will be determined by the sell price of gold from OANDA at 5 pm EST on 18 November
Auction House: Sotheby’s New York
Sale: The Now & Contemporary Evening Auction
Date: 18 November 2025 | 7 pm (New York local time)
“Whatever you eat – a $200 lunch or a $2 hot dog – the results are the same, toilet-wise,” Maurizio Cattelan once said of America.
Unveiled in 2016, the solid gold toilet marked Cattelan’s return from self-imposed retirement and was conceived as what he called “1 percent art for the 99 percent” – a critique of the excesses of the art market and a reflection on the American dream of opportunity for all.
The work fits squarely into Cattelan’s decades-long practice of skewering both the art establishment and broader cultural systems, echoing Marcel Duchamp’s revolutionary Fountain from 1917 – the infamous readymade urinal that challenged fundamental assumptions about what constitutes art.
But where Duchamp elevated a mass-produced object to art status through context alone, Cattelan flips the gesture: he takes the same utilitarian form and recasts it in precious metal, transforming the readymade back into something handcrafted, opulent – and absurdly valuable.
The current value of America shown on Sotheby's website at the time of writing
Maurizio Cattelan
Marcel Duchamp | Fountain (1950) (replica of 1917 original) | Philadelphia Museum of Art
Rather than placing it on a pedestal, America made its debut at New York’s Guggenheim Museum in 2016 – fully plumbed and installed in a functioning bathroom just off the rotunda. Visitors were invited to use the toilet as they would any other, and more than 100,000 visitors waited in line for hours for what the museum described as “unprecedented intimacy with a work of art.”
The following year, the sculpture returned to the spotlight during the early months of Donald Trump’s presidency, when the White House requested the loan of a Van Gogh painting for the president’s private quarters. Citing the work’s fragility, the Guggenheim declined and instead offered America as a long-term alternative. The counter-offer, widely interpreted as a pointed comment on Trump’s taste for gold-plated interiors, went unanswered.
Maurizio Cattelan with America at the Guggenheim
America installed at Blenheim Palace, the site of its theft, in 2019
In 2019, America made headlines once again – this time as the target of a theft. Two days into a solo exhibition of Cattelan’s work at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, England, Winston Churchill's birthplace, the toilet was unbolted from its plumbing and carried off, leaving behind significant water damage to the UNESCO World Heritage site.
That edition, insured for US$6 million, has never been recovered. Authorities believe it was melted down or broken into pieces and discarded. “I always liked heist movies,” Cattelan said at the time, “and finally I’m in one.” Earlier this year, two British men were convicted for their role in the theft.
Maurizio Cattelan | Him (2001) | Sold: US$17,189,000, Christie's New York, 2017 (Auction record for the artist)
According to Sotheby’s, America exists as an edition of three, with two artist’s proofs. The version heading to auction was sold by Cattelan’s gallery, Marian Goodman, in 2017.
The original purchase price hasn’t been disclosed, but when the two toilets were fabricated in 2016, gold was trading at around US$1,300 per troy ounce. At 223 pounds of 18-karat gold, the sculpture’s raw material was worth roughly US$3.2 million at the time.
Coming almost exactly a year after Cattelan’s duct-taped banana fetched US$6.2 million from crypto billionaire Justin Sun – who later ate it – America will test whether the market’s appetite for the artist’s provocations extends into eight-figure territory.
Sotheby’s is once again accepting cryptocurrency payments, offering buyers the opportunity to convert digital assets into solid gold. If bidding surpasses expectations and the piece hammers at US$14.5 million or above, it could overtake the US$17.2 million record set by Him – Cattelan’s 2016 sale of a hyperrealist sculpture depicting a diminutive, kneeling Adolf Hitler.