Somebody find a plumber with a golden plunger!

Serious technical issues are holding up production of Maurizio Cattelan’s 18-karat gold toilet, a sculpture he created that was set for installation at the Guggenheim Museum on Wednesday, according to a spokeswoman there. On Tuesday, the museum announced that the exhibition of “Maurizio Cattelan: America,” as the sculpture is called, would be delayed and that no new opening date had been set. “It’s not days, but I can’t be more specific than that right now,” a spokeswoman said.

The piece is an ambitious tour de force to have been installed in a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed bathroom along the museum’s curving ramp. The solid-gold toilet, a working replica of one by Kohler, was being made in the artist’s studio in Italy when “the foundry encountered technical difficulties which they are working to resolve,” a museum spokeswoman said. “To the museum’s knowledge, this kind of casting process has never been done before.”

And no, the Guggenheim insists this is not another prank by Mr. Cattelan, who retired from art-making in 2011 but recently found himself eager to get back in the game. “Actually, it’s even more of a torture not to work than to work,” he told Randy Kennedy in announcing the end of retirement last month in The New York Times. The sculpture is a punning extension of his work on a magazine called Toilet Paper and also a wry tip of his hat to Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain” urinal.

Neither the Guggenheim, the toilet’s host, nor the artist would give a cost for the toilet, saying only that it was a loan and would be paid for with private funds. Creating the toilet, Mr. Cattelan said, gave him a way “to get around the wall I had hit.”