The artwork by Maurizio Cattelan was broken apart and never recovered, prosecutors said
Three men have been convicted of stealing a $6.4 million solid gold toilet, named ‘America’, from an English museum.
On Tuesday, the jury at Oxford Crown Court found James Sheen, Michael Jones, and Frederick Doe guilty of committing burglary at Blenheim Palace in 2019.
The fully functional 18-carat toilet created by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan “offers a wink to the excesses of the art market but also evokes the American dream of opportunity for all,” according to the description from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York.
More than 100,000 people queued to use the toilet after it was first installed in the Guggenheim in 2016, according to the museum. The artwork left the New York art scene a year later for Blenheim Palace in the UK.
Prosecutor Shan Saunders claimed that a gang of five broke into the palace in an early morning raid and disconnected the toilet from the mains, before absconding. The artwork was quickly “broken up or melted down and sold,” he added, claiming that the gold has never been recovered.
“This was an audacious raid which had been carefully planned and executed – but those responsible were not careful enough, leaving a trail of evidence in the form of forensics, CCTV footage and phone data,” Saunders told the court.
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