Call it potty politics.
On Friday, Fox Business host Stuart Varney called for the resignation of the chief curator of the Guggenheim Museum in New York, Nancy Spector, citing "extreme disrespect" for President Donald Trump, because she offered to loan him a gold toilet.
Last year Trump asked the Guggenheim if it would loan the White House a painting by Vincent van Gogh from its permanent collection, "Landscape With Snow." Ms. Spector responded that the Guggenheim would not be able to provide that painting, but offered an alternative: a fully functional 18-karat gold toilet created for the museum by the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan.
Titled America (2017) the toilet was installed in September 2016, two months before Trump was elected. It's "displayed" inside a public restroom about two-thirds up the museum's spiral walkway and has been used thousands of times.
Varney was outraged by Spector's offer, and took the time on Friday to share his disapproval on the air. "The story I'm about to bring you speaks volumes about the elites and how they look down on this presidency," Varney said. He went on to recount Trump's request and Spector's counter-offer, saying that while it may be taken as "tongue-in-cheek humor," he doesn't see it that way, and he doesn't think that "most Americans will be amused."
Rather, he continued, it is a "direct insult" to the president and the first lady. Spector, he said, is "one of the elites, and she hates this president." He conceded that this is a "minor incident," but promptly pivoted his argument toward the broader political division that has only grown wider in recent years -- thanks, ironically, to Fox News.
"This is how the New York elites treat this presidency: with contempt," Varney said. "The Kennedys and Obamas took their pick of paintings and rightly so, but the Guggenheim offers a toilet. It's not just a slap in the face for the Trumps; it is a slap in the face for the presidency and to the country."
While both the Obamas and the Kennedys did indeed populate the White House with art, neither family borrowed works from the Guggenheim. Nevertheless, Varney concluded that Spector should apologize and resign.
Washington Post art critic Philip Kennicott calls the move a "sick burn" and suggests that it was Spector's offer, and not Cattelan's toilet, that is the true work of art in this scenario. "We assume you only want the van Gogh painting as a status symbol, which we refuse to endorse," he writes, interpreting Spector's intention. "But we will give you what you really crave, which is crass gold."
