TNB Night Owl – Toilet Seat Museum

Toilet Seat Museum. Photo by juliegomoll.

Most artists have a preferred medium for their works. For Barney Smith of San Antonio, Texas, it was toilet seats.

Not that all of the exhibits in his toilet seat museum were all works of art. Some were merely famous for where they had been… the airplane that carried Aristotle Onassis’ body from France back to Greece for burial, for example. Or the space shuttle Challenger.

Most of the seats were actually just the lids of the toilets. Some are designed to focus on items of historical value; the lids featuring pieces of the Berlin Wall or barbed wire from Auschwitz, for example. Some merely showcase bathroom art. Some are an odd combination of both, like the lid which features a piece of Saddam Hussein’s toilet.

Unfortunately for travelers through San Antonio, however, Barney closed down his museum earlier this year. At age 97, he felt it was time to stop hosting visitors.

Fortunately for travelers through North Texas, however, Barney is not the sort of man to give up easily. While he had many offers to purchase individual seats, Mr. Smith refused to accept any of them, seeking to keep the 1400 seats together as a collection. Truck Yard, an outdoor bar with two locations in Dallas and Houston, is opening a third location in The Colony, which is a city just northwest of Dallas. The central artistic draw for the new location? The Barney Smith Toilet Art Museum.

And people say culture is dead.

Question of the night: what’s your favorite type of craft project?

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About AlienMotives 1991 Articles
Ex-Navy Reactor Operator turned bookseller. Father of an amazing girl and husband to an amazing wife. Tired of willful political blindness, but never tired of politics. Hopeful for the future.