Top 200 Collector Steven A. Cohen has been revealed as the consignor of Maurizio Cattelan's golden toilet sculpture, *America* (2016), which will be auctioned at Sotheby's on November 18. The work, made of 18-karat gold and weighing over 100 kilograms, was purchased from Marian Goodman Gallery in 2017. It will be displayed in a bathroom at Sotheby's Breuer Building before the sale, with a starting bid expected around $10 million based on the price of its weight in gold. The piece has a notable history: one version was exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum, offered to the Trump White House as a loan alternative to a van Gogh painting, and another was stolen from Blenheim Palace in 2019, making Cohen's the only extant version.
The sale matters because it involves a high-profile artwork by a provocative contemporary artist and a major collector known for spending over $1 billion on art since 2000. Cohen's consignment highlights the intersection of blue-chip collecting, auction market dynamics, and the cultural resonance of Cattelan's satirical commentary on wealth and value. The auction also follows Cattelan's *Comedian* (2019) selling for $6.2 million at Sotheby's last fall, underscoring the continued market appetite for conceptual and controversial works.