Gold Toilet

Five years ago, the artist Maurizio Cattelan announced his retirement from art by hanging virtually everything he had done—a hundred and twenty-eight startling objects and images—from the skylight at the top of the Guggenheim Museum’s spiral atrium. This week, in a small rest room about two-thirds of the way up the spiral, the Guggenheim installed the first work of his un-retirement: a celestially glowing, fully functional, eighteen-karat solid-gold toilet. When the work goes public on Friday, a uniformed guard will be standing by the door to answer questions, and also, shall we say, to discourage souvenir takers. A discreet label on the wall outside provides the title, “America.”