[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/GettyImages-2273935873.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tA gold-leafed statue of Donald Trump is now standing at his Trump National Doral golf club in Miami after a drawn-out payment dispute.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe 15-foot bronze sculpture, which rises to about 22 feet with its pedestal, was finished with gold leaf after the artist, Ohio-based sculptor Alan Cottrill, proposed the upgrade. \u201cIt [was] like pitching ice water to a man dying of thirst,\u201d Cottrill told the\u00a0Daily Beast<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThe addition helped push the cost of the project, commissioned by a group of cryptocurrency investors to promote their $PATRIOT meme coin, from $300,000 to $360,000. Cottrill also demanded compensation for the group\u2019s use of images of the statue to market the token before his payment had been finalized, which he called copyright infringement. <\/p>\n \n\tThe two sides eventually agreed on an additional fee for that use, the artist said, but the payments stopped when he was still owed approximately $90,000 for the balance of the usage fee plus additional costs. Cottrill then refused to release the statue, keeping it in an undisclosed location until he was paid in full.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThe standoff was only resolved late last month with a wire transfer of $96,750 to Cottrill, and the statue was finally delivered and installed at the course.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThe statue\u2014nicknamed \u201cDon Colossus\u201d\u2014depicts Trump with his fist raised, echoing a gesture he made after a 2024 assassination attempt. It was installed just ahead of a PGA Tour event at the course, where it quickly became a talking point among players and spectators.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThe statue has also drawn wider attention online, with some critics comparing its scale, pose, and gold finish to monuments associated with authoritarian leaders, including North Korea\u2019s Kim Il Sung, while supporters have praised it as a tribute.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/trumps-gold-statue-crypto-dispute-1234783804\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/GettyImages-2273935873.jpg?w=1024″] A gold-leafed statue of Donald Trump is now standing at his Trump National Doral golf club in Miami after a drawn-out payment dispute. The 15-foot bronze sculpture, which rises to about 22 feet with its pedestal, was finished with gold leaf after the artist, Ohio-based sculptor Alan Cottrill, proposed the upgrade. \u201cIt […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1919688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1919688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1919688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1919688\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1919688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1919688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1919688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}