Donald Trump’s Curious Relationship with Art
Five Anecdotes
With a powerful show of voter support, Former President Donald Trump has won the 2024 presidential election and a second term in the White House. Love him or hate him, Trump's storied interactions with the art world have been as colourful and unconventional as his public persona. From commissioning art he ultimately rejected, to trying his hand at sketching, here are five notable anecdotes showcasing Trump’s sometimes controversial approach to art.
1. Rejecting Warhol’s Trump Tower Portraits
In 1981, Trump commissioned Andy Warhol to create portraits of the soon-to-be-built Trump Tower. Warhol produced eight pieces using a monochrome palette with touches of diamond dust. However, Trump rejected the works, declaring that their colours clashed with the peachy tones of the tower’s interior. The unpaid and disappointed Warhol noted in his diary, “I still hate the Trumps because they never bought the paintings I did of the Trump Tower.”
One of the New York Skyscapper paintings will be auctioned at Phillips, New York this week with an estimate of $500,000 - $700,000.
2. The MoMA Mishap
In a 1999 New York Times article, architecture critic Herbert Muschamp recounted a meeting with Donald Trump at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Muschamp’s article begins by including a prescient note on Trump’s potential political ambitions 17 years before his first presidential run, and then goes on to describe Trump arriving at MoMA in an irritable state and mistaking a Donald Judd floor sculpture for a coffee table. Through our research, we believe the work in question was likely Untitled (1968), part of MoMA’s extensive collection of around 80 Judd pieces.
There's a large sculpture in the middle of the room, a brass floor piece by Donald Judd. Evidently Mr. Trump mistakes it for a coffee table, for he uses it as one, tossing his overcoat and some binders full of pictures on top of it as we walk over to the painting.
Quoted from Herbert Muschamp, ART/ARCHITECTURE; Trump, His Gilded Taste, and Me, New York Times, 1999
3. The Renoir That Wasn’t
Timothy O’Brien, Trump’s former biographer, once spotted a painting aboard Trump’s private jet that Trump insisted was an original Renoir titled Two Sisters (On the Terrace). Yet having grown up in Chicago, O’Brien recognised the painting as a work in the permanent collection of the Art Institution of Chicago.
"Donald, it's not [an original Renoir]. I grew up in Chicago, that Renoir is called Two Sisters on a Terrace and it's hanging in the Art Institute of Chicago," Trump disagreed and they moved on to a new topic. The very next day, O'Brien recounts that they re-boarded the plane and Trump again pointed to the painting and said, "You know, that's an original Renoir," as if the previous conversation had never happened.
Quoted from David Alm, Donald Trump Insisted He Owns A Renoir That's Hung In Chicago Museum Since 1933, Forbes, 2017
In the 1990’s, journalist Mark Bowden similarly recounted Trump claiming ownership of a Renoir worth $10 million, seemingly referring to Two Sisters. Trump’s piece in reality is only a reproduction of the 1881 masterpiece and is more likely valued at around $50 - $100.
4. Saying No to Cattelan’s Golden Toilet
In 2017, Trump requested the loan of Vincent van Gogh’s Landscape with Snow from the Guggenheim Museum to display at the White House. Instead, curator Nancy Spector offered Maurizio Cattelan’s America—a fully functional, 18-karat gold toilet that satirised opulence. Trump declined the provocative piece, sparking public discussion about symbolism and a missed opportunity for political satire. The toilet was later displayed at Blenheim Palace in the UK, where it was famously stolen in 2019.
Another storied piece by Maurizio Cattelan, Comedian—comprised of a banana affixed to a wall with duct tape—is set to go under the hammer at Sotheby’s, New York this week. The artwork, which became an internet sensation, carries an estimated value of $1–$1.5 million.
5. Trump’s Own Artistic Forays
Trump has also been known to create art himself, producing simple sketches of New York cityscapes for a charity auction in 2003. Although rudimentary in style, some of these drawings have found a secondary market. One such piece, Untitled (Cityscape Skyline), sold at Sotheby’s, New York in 2020 for $15,000, highlighting the significant commercial value linked to Trump’s name, irrespective of the artwork’s intrinsic quality.
Donald Trump's interactions with art highlight a complex blend of grandeur, defiance, and idiosyncratic taste. Each anecdote underscores themes that have characterised his public life: bold gestures, unyielding declarations, and a disregard for convention.
As Trump steps into his second presidential term following the 2024 election, these stories offer more than entertainment—they reflect an approach that intertwines personal branding with cultural encounters, and how this attitude will shape his administration’s policies on arts funding and cultural support remains an open question.