Sotheby’sA gold toilet that fetched $12.1m (£9.3m) at auction was bought by Ripley’s Believe It or Not!, after its first casting was stolen from Blenheim Palace in 2019.
America, created by Italian conceptual artist Maurizio Cattelan, is a fully functional toilet, made from more than 15st 13lb (101.2kg) of solid 18-carat gold.
The first version of the work was initially installed in a public bathroom at the Guggenheim museum in New York in 2016 but hit the news again three years later when a gang of thieves stole it from the Oxfordshire palace.
The existence of a second golden toilet was later revealed, and went under the hammer at Sotheby’s in New York City on Tuesday. The 101 kg toilet received just one bid.
The auction house said that in a world first, the starting bid would be determined by the exact price of its weight in gold, at about $10m (£7.6m).
While it only said it was bought by a famous American brand, Ripley’s Believe It or Not! later revealed themselves as the mystery buyer in an Instagram post, writing “we’re flush with excitement”.
The entertainment company runs attractions including museums of oddities and aquariums around the world.
It made headlines in 2022 for allowing celebrity and entrepreneur Kim Kardashian to wear a dress owned by Marilyn Monroe to the Met Gala.
Now, their team say they are “exploring possibilities” as to whether guests will ever be permitted to “take the ultimate golden seat”.
“Such an opportunity requires serious planning and someone brave enough to ensure everything keeps flowing in the right direction,” Ripley’s added.
The artwork achieved the second highest price for a Cattelan piece at auction. His sculpture of a kneeling Hitler sold for $17.2m (£11.9m) in 2016.
It is estimated more than 100,000 people used the first toilet while it was at the Guggenheim before it was moved and exhibited at Blenheim Palace.
It was there that in the early hours of 14 September 2019, five men smashed their way in, ripped out the £4.8m solid gold installation and fled in a stolen Volkswagen Golf.
The heist and the trial that followed made news across the world.
Sotheby’sJames Sheen, 40, from Oxford, pleaded guilty to burglary and transferring criminal property in 2024. Michael Jones, 39, from Oxford, was found guilty of burglary in March. Both were both jailed earlier this year.
Fred Doe, 36, from Windsor, was also convicted of conspiracy to transfer criminal property and given a suspended sentence.
Sotheby’s revealed that Cattelan created three toilets in 2016, with the second version on display in a bathroom at New York’s Breuer Building until it went under the hammer.
The auction house described it as a “cultural phenomenon” and an “incisive commentary on the collision of artistic production and commodity value”.
David Galperin, head of contemporary art at Sotheby’s New York, called it Cattelan’s “tour de force”.
“Holding both a proverbial and literal mirror to the art world, the work confronts the most uncomfortable questions about art, and the belief systems held sacred to the institutions of the market and the museum,” he said.
On the same evening a portrait by the Austrian artist Gustav Klimt was sold for $236.4m (£179m), making it the second most expensive piece ever sold at auction.
