Cube made of pure gold worth $11.7million appears in Central Park and even has its own security team

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There’s gold in them thar hills – of Central Park.

A German artist has created a cube supposedly made from pure gold and plopped it in the middle of Manhattan’s largest greenspace – in a wild publicity stunt to draw attention to a new cryptocoin that was launched at the same time.

Reportedly made from pure, 24-carat, 999.9 fine gold and weighing 410 pounds, Niclas Castello took more than 4,500 hours to create it. The cube has a hollow core. 

If the gold is real, the entire artwork would be valued at $11.7 million, going by the current price of the precious metal of $1,788 per ounce.

A security team has been stationed near the Naumburg Bandshell in the southern portion of the park to keep watch over the prized structure in case someone tries to dash off the 410-pound cube in the crime-plagued city.

The cub is just over a foot-and-a half in dimension and about quarter of an inch thick, with a hollow center

The unique work was developed to draw publicity to the artist’s own cryptocoin, known a ‘Castello Coin.’

‘Never before in the history of humanity has such an enormous amount of gold been cast into a single, pure object. Gold – the eternal metal. Symbol of the sun, of light, of the good,’ Castello wrote. 

The work of art, named the Castello CUBE, was manufactured in the Art Foundry H. Rüetschi in Aarau, Switzerland and required a handmade kiln to be created that was large enough to hold the volume of the gold.

The kiln was heated up high enough to melt gold bars at 1,100 degrees Celsius for it to be recast. 

Lisa Kandlhofer, a Viennese gallerist who was at the cube’s launch, fawned: ‘[It is] a sort of communiqué between an emerging 21st-century cultural ecosystem based on crypto and the ancient world where gold reigned supreme,’ according to Artnet News. 

For the last few days, huge screens in Times Square have been displaying some mysterious coordinates: N 40° 46′ 22″ / W 73° 58′ 17″ – the site for the cube’s location.

The cube was unveiled Wednesday at a private dinner at Cipriani’s on Wall Street, where numerous celebrities were said to be in attendance, according to ArtNet. 

A few visiting the cube on a rainy afternoon in Manhattan admired the gold artwork.

‘The reflections are incredible,’ said Brigitte Bentele to the New York Times.  ‘Putting it there in the snow seems really inspired.’ 

However, most considered the structure a lavish waste, considering the rising levels of poverty and homelessness in New York City.

‘The $11.7 million gold cube sitting in Central Park should be melted down and the proceeds should go to the poor and people without homes,’ wrote one.

Another on Twiter wrote: ‘There’s so much better you could do with 11 million dollars than plop a gold cube in central park and then sell nfts and crypto after putting your name in the rich people hat like, i dunno, pay for the awful infrastucture the city doesn’t care enough for or something.’

Art historian, Dr. Dieter Buchhart, says he considers the cube to be ‘unique in the history of art’ since there were no models as to how such an object could be created.

‘The cube can be seen as a sort of communiqué between an emerging 21st-century cultural ecosystem based on crypto and the ancient world where gold reigned supreme,’ Gallerist Lisa Kandlhofer told ArtNet.

Castello, who was born in East Germany in 1978 but now lives and work in both New York and Switzerland. is also launching his own cryptocurrency, called the Castello Coin, to coincide with his latest work of art.