Located at 327 Bloor Street West, Toronto ON M5S 1W7, the Bata Shoe Museum (BSM) opened its door to the public on May 6, 1995 in an iconic building designed by Moriyama and Teshima Architects. As a unique, world-class specialized museum, with regular displays over a thousand shoes and related artefacts from virtually every culture in the world, selected from a collection of nearly 15 000 objects, it has become a major destination point for visitors and residents alike.
Celebrating the style, development and function of footwear displayed across four galleries, BSM’s ranges over 4,500 years of history are reflected in our permanent exhibition, All Abou Shoes, while BSM’s three other galleries feature changing exhibitions.
All About Shoes
The Museum’s flagship exhibition, All About Shoes, is a voyage through 4500 years of footwear: its evolution, uses over time, methods and materials of manufacture, and its place in our lives and imaginations.
Greatly involved in the global shoe industry, when Sonja Bata’s private collection had outgrown its home, the Bata family established the Bata Shoe Museum Foundation with its main objective to establish an international centre for footwear research.
The result was the BSM, with its unrivalled collection of over 14 000 shoes and related objects.
Over the years by funding fieldwork, Foundation started to collect and research footwear in communities — notably North America’s Indigenous cultures and circumpolar groups in Canada, Siberia, Alaska and Greenland.
Besides being home to the world’s largest and most comprehensive collection of shoes and footwear-related objects, BSM is also an internationally recognized centre for footwear research that sponsors field research, publishes research findings and promotes education.
