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Golden Toilet To Be Installed At Blenheim Palace
3 May 2019, 18:11 | Updated: 3 May 2019, 18:18
A palace is a fitting place for a throne, and there will soon be a gold one at Blenheim Palace.
An 18-karat gold, fully-functioning toilet is to be installed this autumn, and visitors in need of a comfort break will be able to use it.
Made by artist Maurizio Cattelan in 2016, it will be opposite the room in which Winston Churchill was born.
Donald Trump was offered it after being told he could not borrow a fragile Van Gogh to hang in the White House.
Founder of the Blenheim Art Foundation, Edward Spencer-Churchill, said it would be a novelty - even for him.
"Despite being born with a silver spoon in my mouth, I have never had a ****on a golden toilet," he told The Guardian.
"It will be an installed, working, usable toilet," he added.
Security will be enhanced, but it has not been decided how long visitors will be able to stay on the golden loo.
"We'd like people to enjoy their time in there without giving them too much time, if that makes sense," Mr Spencer-Churchill said.
After the artwork was installed at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2016, an estimated 100,000 people went to see it, queuing for about two hours before being allowed in one at a time.
Writing about the toilet on the Guggenheim's website, Nancy Spector said it was a "sculptural performance of interactive art" and "laden with possible meanings".
She added that the "equation between excrement and art has long been mined by neo-Marxist thinkers who question the relationship between labour and value".
It will be part of an exhibition of Cattelan's work, following other shows of work at Blenheim by Ai Weiwei, Lawrence Weiner, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Jenny Holzer and Yves Klein.
