Toronto’s Bata Shoe Museum has been adding its unique collections to the city’s cultural mix for three decades. More than just fascinating footwear, the museum examines human history, and tells stories from diverse perspectives from all over the world. BSM is considered one of Canada’s prominent material culture museums.
The Museum will celebrate the occasion with a new exhibition that’s titled “Rough & Ready: A History of the Cowboy Boot”, opening May 7. The cowboy boot was invented back in the 19th century, with a rich tradition of craftsmanship alongside its functional elements. What started with practical dimensions has become symbolic of a lifestyle, and finally, a fashion statement.
The genesis of the Museum’s collection comes from the personal collection of a Swiss Canadian businesswoman and philanthropist Sonja Bata, and was started in the 1940s, shortly after she and her husband moved to Toronto from Zurich. The Bata Shoe Company had been established by the family in 1894 in Czechoslovakia. Today, the company is headquartered in Switzerland.
It was her fascination with footwear that resulted in more than 1,500 pairs of shoes that, understandably, cluttered the company storerooms.
Today, the collection consists of more than 13,000 artifacts that cover virtually the entirety of human history. The Bata Shoe Museum Foundation, created with an endowment from Sonja to professionally manage the collection, began public exhibitions in the early 1990s, and the museum itself — designed in the shape of a shoebox — opened in 1995.
Some of the Museum’s highlights through its history include:
Today, the BSM’s collection includes nearly 15,000 artifacts, from all over the world, incorporating 4,500 years of history from Indigenous boots to the bejewelled slippers of South Asian royalty.
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