It was a crime of absurdist proportions, a heist worthy of Maurizio Cattelan himself. In the predawn hours of September 14, 2019, a gang of thieves stormed Blenheim Palace, the birthplace of Winston Churchill, and made off with one of the most famous—and most satirical—works of contemporary art: America, an 18-carat solid gold toilet. The conceptual masterpiece, which once gleamed inside the Guggenheim Museum’s pristine white galleries, was yanked from its plumbing and vanished into the black market, never to be seen again.
Now, as the trial unfolds in Oxford Crown Court, the details of the operation are as audacious as the artwork itself. One defendant, Michael Jones, is accused of meticulously scouting the site, snapping reconnaissance photos of a window that would later be shattered for entry. The break-in was executed with military efficiency: five men, two stolen vehicles, a wooden gate rammed open, and a toilet ripped from its moorings, flooding the historic 18th-century palace in the process.
The work at the center of this fiasco, America, is Cattelan at his most wickedly sardonic—a fully functioning golden toilet that lampoons excessive wealth while implicating those who sit upon it. Initially displayed at the Guggenheim in 2016, the piece made international headlines when the museum’s curator, Nancy Spector, cheekily offered it to then-President Donald Trump instead of a Van Gogh painting he had requested. The White House declined.
At Blenheim Palace, visitors could book three-minute appointments to experience Cattelan’s satire firsthand. That opportunity ended abruptly when the thieves—driven by greed or perhaps some perverse appreciation for Cattelan’s provocations—dismantled the piece, likely melting it down for scrap. Its insured value was $6 million, but its cultural impact was priceless.
Prosecutors argue that Jones, along with his employer, James Sheen—who has already pleaded guilty—conspired to fence the stolen gold. Text messages between Sheen and associates Fred Doe and Bora Guccuk refer to the loot in code, calling it a “car,” though the cargo in question was considerably heavier.
The defense maintains the accused are innocent. But guilty or not, the crime itself reads like a Cattelan stunt taken to criminal extremes. The artist, known for his pranks (including taping a banana to a wall), is no stranger to theft—he once claimed to have stolen design ideas for his early furniture works. But here, the joke has rebounded with unintended consequences, leaving Blenheim Palace with a gaping hole in its plumbing and its legacy of hosting conceptual art.
Ultimately, America may be gone, its gold recast into anonymous trinkets, but its legacy remains intact. The toilet may have been a satire of wealth, power, and access, but this theft has rewritten its meaning yet again. Now, it is a cautionary tale about the literal and metaphorical value of art in an era where everything, even satire, can be commodified and stolen.
