The offer of a golden toilet seems just right

If you're looking to make a charitable donation to a worthy organization, might I suggest you consider the Guggenheim Museum in New York?

Thanks to a recently leaked email, when the White House emailed the Guggenheim in September and asked to borrow Vincent Van Gogh's 1888 painting "Landscape with Snow," the curator made a counteroffer:

A fully functional 18-karat gold toilet.

The toilet is an interactive work titled “America” that critics have described as pointed satire aimed at the excess of wealth in this country.

It might not seem like much, but institutions like the Guggenheim art can play a role in refusing to normalize this Presidency, which is important.

Other examples:

Obama's inaugural concert featured Beyoncé, Mary J. Blige, Jon Bon Jovi, Garth Brooks, Sheryl Crow, Josh Groban, John Legend, John Mellencamp, Bruce Springsteen, James Taylor, U2, and Stevie Wonder, with speeches and readings by Jack Black, Steve Carell, Rosario Dawson, Jamie Foxx, Tom Hanks, Samuel L. Jackson, Ashley Judd, Martin Luther King III, Queen Latifah, Laura Linney, George Lopez, Marisa Tomei, Denzel Washington, Forest Whitaker and Tiger Woods.

Trump's inaugural concert featured Lee Greenwood, Three Doors Down, and a speech by Jon Voight.  

Trump also declined the traditional Presidential invitation to the Kennedy Center Honors for fear of backlash, and he refused to attend his own White House Correspondence Dinner, becoming the first President since Reagan to weasel out of this annual event. 

He has also declined to be interviewed prior to this year's Super Bowl, making him the first President in 17 years to skip this tradition.

Add to this his historically low rating for his recent State of the Union address, his historcally low approval rating, and the enormous number of Republican Senators and Congressmen who have announced their retirements prior to the 2018 midterm election, and it's clear that as much as Trump wants to claim victory at every turn, this is not a normal Presidency, and America and its institutions are working hard not to normalize it.

Including offering him a golden toilet instead of a Van Gogh.

These things also make Trump look stupid and sad, which ain't a bad outcome, either.   

Beautiful but temporary: Why would an artist ever choose such a fleeting medium?

This is remarkable, beautiful, unbelievable, and maddeningly temporary. You must watch. 

It's hard to imagine why someone so talented would create art that lasts for such a short period of time. 

Perhaps he doesn't suffer from the existential crisis that plagues me.

Vincent Van Gogh on Doctor Who makes me cry.

You may know that I don't handle mortality well. 

One of the things that hurts my heart most is the idea that when we die, we cannot see tomorrow. We'll never know how this grand story ends, and how far reaching our influence may be.

I weep for people like Abraham Lincoln, Edgar Allen Poe, Johann Sebastian Bach, Emily Dickinson, Gregor Mendel, and all the others who died never knowing how they changed the word. 

Vincent Van Gogh is another person who fits into this category. One of the greatest painters of all time never realized commercial success or critical acclaim when he was alive.

This is why I adore this episode of Doctor Who, when the Doctor and his companion Amy take Vincent Van Gogh to the Musée d’Orsay to see an entire room filled with his paintings.

It brings me close to tears every time I watch it. If only it were real.