Bata Shoe Museum
A museum devoted entirely to footwear, holding some 15,000 shoes spanning 4,500 years of history.
The Bata Shoe Museum opened on Bloor Street West in May 1995 and is built around the collection assembled by Sonja Bata, who began gathering footwear in the 1940s. Its holdings now run to roughly 15,000 shoes and related artefacts covering some 4,500 years, from Ancient Egyptian sandals and Chinese bound-foot slippers to Inuit sealskin kamiks and celebrity stage shoes. The permanent gallery, All About Shoes, sets this material in a broad cultural and technological history of footwear.
Raymond Moriyama designed the building to suggest a shoebox with its lid slightly lifted, tilting the limestone-clad walls and inserting an angled band of glazing where the lid parts from the box. Three further galleries carry a rotating programme of temporary exhibitions, which have covered subjects from Roman military boots to the history of the sneaker. The museum also maintains a research library and conservation laboratory, and sits a short walk from St George subway station.
Highlights
- All About Shoes, a permanent survey of 4,500 years of footwear
- Raymond Moriyama's building shaped like a lifted shoebox lid
- Chinese bound-foot shoes and Inuit sealskin kamiks
- Rotating temporary exhibitions across three further galleries
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