Bata Shoe Museum

Bata Shoe Museum

Located in Toronto, the Bata Shoe Museum is a footwear museum which collects, preserves, exhibits footwear from around the world. It makes as well multiple researches about the footwear. This museum is the only museum in North America dedicated solely to the history of footwear. The museum offers permanent and time-limited exhibitions, lectures, performances and family events.

The Bata Shoe Museum collection contains about 14,000 items from throughout history. Its collection was started by Sonja Bata in the 1940s. Sonja Bata was married to Thomas J. Bata of the Bata Shoe Company. In 1979, the Bata family established the Bata Shoe Museum Foundation. To 1994, the collection was stored at the offices of Bata Limited in the Don Mills area of Toronto. On May 6, 1995, the current museum opened its doors to the public in its building.

Bata Shoe Museum. photo by Elena

Designed by Raymond Moriyama, the structure sits on the southwest corner of Bloor and St. George Streets in downtown Toronto. Its form is derived from the idea of the museum as a container. The building also is meant to evoke an opening shoe box. The main facade (north) along Bloor Street pinches inward to where the entrance, in the form of a glass shard, emerges. The stone volume appears to float above a ribbon of glass display windows on street level, and its vast expanse of limestone glows in the late afternoon sunlight.

Raymond Moriyama said of the edifice: “Architecture is never the creation of the architect alone. The museum’s architecture should be seen as a celebration not only of shoes but also of the wonderful vision that brought them into the public eye.”

The publicly accessible part of the building consists of four stories, which contain four galleries, two lecture and multi-purpose rooms, a gift shop, and a lobby, as well as offices and conservation facilities. The gallery spaces are neutral in design, allowing focus on the creative displays, not the building itself. However, traditional materials such as cast bronze and leather (an important material in shoe creation for centuries) are used in signage throughout the museum.

General view of the museum. Photo by Elena

The permanent collection contains artifacts from virtually every culture in the world. One of the most important aspects of the museum’s holdings is an extensive collection of Native American and circumpolar footwear. The museum’s assortment of celebrity footwear includes ballroom slippers worn by Queen Victoria, the monogrammed silver platform boots of Elton John, a Terry Fox running shoe, white and blue patent loafers of Elvis Presley and John Lennon’s Beatle boot.

Address of Bata Shoe Museum:

327 Bloor Street West, Toronto, Canada

(Bloor St. and St George St. in the Bloor St. Culture Corridor)

Website of Bata Shoe Museum: www.batashoemuseum.ca