The art world has much to look forward to in the coming weeks as major works head to New York’s auction rooms, with potential new records for both Klimt and Kahlo and several significant single-owner collections on offer.
Adding to the fanfare, Sotheby’s has announced that it will auction a 100-kilogram gold toilet known as America, a fully functioning sculpture by professional provocateur Maurizio Cattelan.
Cattelan – who drew global headlines in November 2024 when Comedian (2019), the infamous banana duct-taped to a wall, sold for $6.2 million to crypto billionaire Justin Sun – returns to Sotheby’s with bidding expected to open around $10 million.
See also: The Story Behind Cattelan's Banana
Created in 2016, the piece is a solid, 18-karat-gold recreation of a Kohler toilet, produced in an edition of two. The edition coming to auction this November was sold through Marian Goodman Gallery in 2017 to a private collector, rumoured to be hedge fund manager and New York Mets owner Steve Cohen.
The other edition has had a far more turbulent history. First installed at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 2016, where more than 100,000 visitors used it, it was later offered on loan to the White House during the first Trump administration as an alternative to a requested Van Gogh. In 2019, while on loan at Blenheim Palace, the birthplace of Sir Winston Churchill and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, it was stolen; two of the thieves were convicted in June 2025, but the piece was never recovered.
See also: An 18K Gold Toilet Artwork Was Stolen
With that history in mind, the remaining edition will be installed in a bathroom at Sotheby’s new headquarters in the Breuer Building. In an auction first, the house has announced that the starting bid will be tied to the artwork’s melt value, tracking the price of gold until the hammer falls. At current market rates, that places the opening bid in the region of $10 million (crypto payments will be accepted). In a press statement, David Galperin, Sotheby’s New York Head of Contemporary Art, described the work as Cattelan’s “grandest Duchampian gesture,” one intended to provoke the question: How do we value art?
When Comedian sold last year, it sparked debate around authorship, value, and spectacle; Sotheby’s positions America as “its perfect foil,” a work whose material worth is objectively measurable in the moment of sale.
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Though the art world may thrive on provocation, reactions to this announcement are likely to be mixed, particularly in this socio-economic climate.
