Barney Smith’s Toilet Seat Museum
New location: The Colony, Texas (5959 Grove Lane)
When to visit: Truck Yard is open 11 am to 2 am daily
Cost: Free
Time needed: 45-60 minutes
Website: Museum’s Legacy Facebook page
Imagine dedicating three decades of your life to turning toilet seats into works of art. That’s exactly what retired plumber Barney Smith did in San Antonio, Texas.
Barney amassed a collection of more than 1400 toilet seats, all decorated to honor various travel locations, tv shows, universities, board games, and just about anything else you can think of. He displayed the toilet seats in the garage of his home and invited the public to come view them for free.
Barney passed away in 2019 at the age of 98, but his collection lives on in a new location at the Truck Yard in The Colony, Texas.
The Toilet Seat Art Museum was truly one of the most unique places I’ve ever visited. Keep reading to learn about the museum’s history, see photos from the original location, and learn about its new location at the Truck Yard.
The Museum’s Current Location at the Truck Yard
As Barney got older, he started to wonder what would happen to his collection of artistic toilet seats when he passed away. Fortunately, his collection was purchased by the Truck Yard, which bills itself as a “come-as-you-are beer garden and adult playground.”
The Truck Yard, which gets its name from its collection of trendy food trucks, is located in The Colony, a city just north of Dallas.
Truck Yard owners Jason and Amanda Boso have created a unique space. The entrance features 26 standing, partially-buried cars in a tribute to Cadillac Ranch, another of the state’s quirkiest landmarks.
Boso initially approached Barney about buying a few of his toilet seats to display. But he was soon convinced to purchase the entire collection when he saw how important it was for Barney to find a home for the collection.
Boso reportedly paid about $18 per toilet seat. That adds up to roughly $25,000 for the full collection. That’s a lot of cash for commodes!
Barney never stopped working on his toilet seats. During my initial visit to his San Antonio garage in 2013, he had approximately 1100 seats. By 2016, that number had eclipsed 1250. And he reached around 1400 seats by the summer of 2019.
The new Toilet Seat Museum officially opened on Memorial Day 2019. Barney was there in person to cut the ribbon, and he was moved that his toilet art would be properly taken care of.
He told the Austin Chronicle, “At my age, I’m just glad Jason is keeping a part of me alive. Ain’t it great?” Barney died two months later.
Today, you can visit Barney’s work at the Truck Yard in The Colony. Guests can see the Toilet Seat Museum anytime the Truck Yard is open – that’s all the way until 2 am every night.
Visiting the Original Toilet Seat Art Museum in San Antonio
These days, people create modern art from all sorts of strange objects (hello, Philadelphia Magic Gardens!), but several decades ago when Barney Smith started created his own unique plaques by affixing objects to toilet seats, he was definitely thinking outside the box.
That’s right – toilet seats. More than thirty years later, Barney had a collection of more than 1,100 pieces at his Toilet Seat Art Museum in San Antonio.
He was in his 90s and still eagerly greeted visitors who want to see one of the most unique art collections in America. I stopped by in 2013 to check out the collection.
The bulk of his art was composed of random objects stuck to toilet seats. They commemorate pop culture trends, sports teams, historic events, basic household products, and everything else you can possibly imagine.
Check out the range of seats on display. My favorite is the OJ Simpson glove seat:
Barney’s museum was featured on Good Morning America, Montel Williams, The Tonight Show, CBS This Morning, The View, and many other tv outlets.
Of course, each show he’s visited has its own piece of artwork in the museum. I bet Babs Walters never thought she’d see her face on a toilet seat!
The Most Amazing Toilet Seats in Barney Smith’s Collection
The amazing thing about Barney’s museum was that, in addition to the quirky aspect of the homemade toilet art, there’s real history here, including a piece of the Challenger shuttle, a million dollars of shredded cash, and a portion of Saddam Hussein’s toilet from his Iraq bunker.
Most everybody in San Antonio knew Barney, so people often brought him souvenirs he could use on his toilets. That’s how he came into possession of this flushing device from Saddam Hussein’s commode.
A former Navy commander visited Hussein’s underground bunker in 2004 and brought back a portion of the ceramic toilet just for Barney.
That’s also how Barney came to acquire a piece of insulation from the Challenger shuttle, which exploded on takeoff in 1986. A friend of his happened to be in Florida at the time and picked up a chunk of the wreckage that fell to earth.
It ended up in Barney’s hands, and he proceeded to create one of his toilet plaques to commemorate the event.
I don’t know many other museums where you can touch a real piece of the Challenger. Talk about an impressive piece of history!
Here’s a toilet seat with one million dollars of shredded cash, as donated by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Antonio. (Would you be tempted to try to put it back together?)
Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980 in Washington. Leave it to Barney to get his hands on some volcanic ash from the blast, which he rubbed into the background of this St. Helens seat.
Here’s the toilet seat that truly tells you how dedicated Barney is to this whole endeavor. Years ago when his wife went in for gallstone surgery, he decided to keep her IVs and fluid bags and put them on display.
How many people can say their spouse created a “surgery toilet seat” just for them?
Here’s Barney with a “My Alma Mater” graduation seat from Lee University.
The process for visiting the original Barney Smith Toilet Seat Art Museum was to call the man personally. He would then come out to meet guests at the museum, which was in his garage behind the house.
Guests could expect Barney to keep them for around an hour, and that’s a good thing – he was excited to show you all the seats, especially the ones relevant to you.
He had toilet seats for each state and most countries, and we were asked to autograph the ones that represent us.
Here’s my friend and me posing with the Illinois toilet seat we signed.
Each seat was individually numbered and tracked in a detailed notebook that serves as a record of his toilet seats and a visitor log. Barney said each seat can take about 20 hours to finish, depending on its complexity.
There’s a story behind each seat, and he was happy to tell us each tale. The most recent seat he created was the one for his and his wife’s 74th wedding anniversary.
The Guinness company contacted Barney about the possibility of featuring him in its book of world records, but he declined because the process (filling out forms, getting them notarized, etc.) was too much of a hassle.
Barney didn’t sell any of his art. It was all just a fun hobby. He did have plans for his collection once he’s gone – Barney said that Bemis, the toilet seat manufacturer in Wisconsin, had expressed interest in displaying his seats there eventually. But for now, his collection will stay at the Truck Yard.
You can find the Barney Smith Museum online. “I don’t have a computer, but I have a Facebook page,” he liked to brag. Find his page here.
The Toilet Seat Museum is one of several unique attractions in the state of Texas, along with the Houston Art Car Museum, the Natural Bridge Wildlife Ranch, the bats under the Congress Bridge in Austin, and the giant Presidential Head sculptures.
