SEE: Guggenheim Opening Gold Toilet Exhibition (And Yes You Can Use it)

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — The Guggenheim Museum is inviting visitors to do a whole lot more than touch the artwork in its new exhibit opening Friday. The exhibition is a gold toilet, it's located in the museum's bathroom — and yes, you can use it.

The new exhibit, euphemistically referred to as "site-specific," was designed by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan. The work is titled "America" — which makes you wonder what Italians think of Americans in general — and it's literally a solid gold toilet that replaced one of the museum's regular toilets in its public restroom. It is located about two-thirds of the way up the museum's spiral ramp and will have a security guard positioned outside.

If you think the line to use the restroom at Yankees games is long, we shudder to think how long the lines will be for this "opportunity to spend time completely alone with a work of art," as the museum puts it.

"The new work makes available to the public an extravagant luxury product seemingly intended for the 1 percent," the museum's statement reads. "Its participatory nature, in which viewers are invited to make use of the fixture individually and privately, allows for an experience of unprecedented intimacy with an artwork."

Unprecedented intimacy is one way of putting it.

Cattelan was born in Padua, Italy — the setting of Williams Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing" — but he now lives in New York City. This is the second time his work has been exhibited at the Guggenheim. He exhibited almost every piece of artwork he'd ever done in his life in a November 2011 to January 2012 show called "Maurizio Cattelan: All."

Photo Credit: Kris McKay, Copyright Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation