Baltimore art museum names John Waters bathrooms

When you are an icon, you have to think seriously about your heritage. What do you want to leave behind when you leave? How will your name be remembered? When dirt is its life, the answer is clear: put your name on a fucking bathroom.

At some point in the future, visitors to the Baltimore Museum Of Art will be able to make a large dump in one of the John Waters restrooms, a place to powder your nose, adjust your eyeliner, and look into the mirror and say to her reflection, “I’m so beautiful I can’t stand it on my own.” Honor, that proposed by man, myth, legend itself, is the result of an incredibly generous gift.

here is the Baltimore Sun:

John Waters, the self-proclaimed “trash pope” of Baltimore, announced Wednesday that he is bequeathing some of the most valuable things he owns – around 375 prints, paintings and photographs – to the Baltimore Museum of Art.

As a thank you, museum officials will rename two bathrooms in the east lobby “The John Waters Restrooms” in honor of the cult filmmaker and visual artist. The domed room of European art galleries will also be called “The John Waters Rotunda”.[…]

“Renaming the bathrooms was my idea from the start,” he said. “They thought I was kidding and I said, ‘No, I’m serious.’ It’s in the spirit of the work that I collect, which has a sense of humor, is confrontational and minimalist and which drives people crazy.

As is often the case with Waters, the legacy and honor that comes from it is a dizzying mix of art, trash, dirt and wit. Only one thing in the world could be better than the Baltimore Museum Of Art which gives its bathrooms the name of the Pope Of Trash, and it is the Baltimore Museum Of Art that gives its bathrooms the name of the Pope Of Trash. at the request of Pope Of Trash.

The collection is, unsurprisingly, no joke. Well, it’s full of jokes, but it’s a major giveaway. Speak Sun, neither Waters nor museum representatives would comment on the estimated value of the collection, but it is almost 400 “prints, paintings and photographs” and includes works by Andy Warhol, Diane Arbus and Roy Lichtenstein, for n ‘to name a few. Almost 90 pieces in the collection were created by Waters himself, a body of work including prints, sculptures, videos and multimedia pieces.

the Sun This article is worth reading in its entirety, if only for the story of Waters’ connection to the museum and the debt he feels owed to the institution. But we’ll leave you this delicious kicker:

Waters is already having fun imagining which pieces will be on display – and in which parts of the museum. The John Waters toilet, he thinks, might be a logical choice. The filmmaker began to mentally browse his collection and check off the possibilities:

“I have a Tony Tasset piece called ‘I Peeed My Pants’,” Waters said. “There’s Mike Kelley’s ‘Wedged Lump’ that looks exactly like giant shit. I also have the muslin toilet paper from George Stoll.

“I have a lot of artwork that would work in a bathroom.”

Please let it happen. Your move, Baltimore Museum Of Art.

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