Heel to Toe:

Shoes from the Fleming Museum

September 4 - December 14, 2007
Wilbur Room

Footwear -whether viewed as personal, decorative, or utilitarian- is an intimate reflection of personal identity and broader cultural values. Selected from the hundreds of pairs of shoes in the Fleming Museum collections, this exhibition displays a variety of footwear, from nineteenth-century American baby shoes to Native American snowshoes. Wedding shoes from Pakistan and Vermont reveal the diverse cultural practices around marriage ceremonies, while snowshoes, sandals, and boots help us understand how people from various places have coped with their environments. Footwear has also been used to manipulate and change the human body, from China's lotus shoes for bound feet to the Western stiletto heel. Whether worn every day, used only for special occasions, or perhaps donned only a single time, the shoes in the Fleming Museum collections offer a cross-cultural perspective on how humans have used footwear to mold identity and display social values.