The new owner of Alamo Heights' iconic Toilet Seat Art Museum discovered the exhibit through self-described "drunk Googling."

With a bottle of wine in front of him, Texas Truck Yard owner Jason Boso was scanning the internet for creative and unique artistic items and he stumbled upon the museum that boasts more than 1,400 decorated toilet seat lids. Barney Smith, the 97-year-old curator and owner of the museum, had been trying to sell his prized collection so when Boso called him up the two struck a deal.

Come the end of February, Smith's legacy will have a new home at the Texas Truck Yard's newest location at The Colony, just north of Dallas. It's a bittersweet sale for Smith, who has devoted several decades to growing and showing the collection but is now feeling too worn-out to keep it up.

"It makes my heart rejoice, because they're going to put my legacy there in The Colony above Dallas, about a 15-minute drive, and I'm hoping that they do a good job," Smith said.

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Formerly a master plumber, Smith kick-started his compilation after a successful few weeks hunting deer. His father put the antlers of a deer he had shot onto a plaque made of wood and Smith put his on a toilet seat.

In his years collecting since then, Smith has garnered national attention — and international toilet seats. Some feature pieces of the Berlin Wall, barbed wire from Auschwitz, Suddam Hussein's toilet and NASA's space shuttle Challenger. A recent addition was sent and signed by Spurs Coach Gregg Popovich. Many of the lids are artistic inventions of Smith.

One of his favorites was a toilet lid from the airplane that carried the body of Aristotle Onassis, second husband to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who was previously married to former President John F. Kennedy. Smith surmised Jacqueline Onassis would likely have been on that same plane.

"Jackie Kennedy might have sat on this seat," Smith said. "I have the lid ... but she might have sat on the lid when it was closed trying to put her makeup on in the bathroom there or something."

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Hussein, Kennedy and Popovich seats alike will be packed up in dozens of H-E-B banana boxes for the trip up north. Smith encouraged visitors to come by sooner rather than later; he's already started boxing some of the seats up.

Although Smith won't be able to see the seats just by walking into his garage anymore, he said he's thrilled to know the new owners will uphold his legacy. He and his family had hoped some collector would buy and keep the entire exhibit together.

"We're going to call it Barney Smith's Toilet Seat Art Museum," Boso said. "We're not going to hide it, we're going to put it front and center and make it a top 20 roadside attraction in America. That's what we're going for."

He said he's hoping to continue expanding the collection and hinted that the toilet seat of Texas actor Matthew McConaughey would make a nice addition.

It will be the third location for Truck Yards, which already has locations in Houston and Dallas. In addition, the North Texas Truck Yard will have a biergarten ("we sometimes say 'bargarten,'" Boso said), food trucks, free live music, a tiki bar, a karaoke room and a brewery.

"We're going to try to present all 1,400 of these toilet seats in a fun way that you might be able to grab a beer and walk around the look at all the art that Barney has been working on all these years," Boso said. "It will definitely be the most artistic thing in the Truck Yard, which is saying something considering we have 28 vintage cars sticking out of the ground right now."

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Both Smith and Boso declined to share the sale price of the museum.

Smith will continue to show visitors around his garage until they're moved to the Dallas area, though the exhibit is growing admittedly smaller as he prepares to shut down. His first deer toilet seat will be one of the last he packs, he said.

Those hoping to get the original experience — a tour by the King of the Commode himself — should arrange appointments after 1 p.m. by calling 210-824-7791.

“If you haven’t gone and met Barney Smith yet, do not miss the opportunity,” a woman said in a Facebook post. “It’s great the museum is going to live on, but it will never be as awesome as it is without Barney there to talk to.”

S. M. Chavey is a breaking news and general assignment writer. Read her on our breaking news site, mySA.com and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com | sarah.chavey@express-news.net | @smchavey

