Shoe blog

Walk This Way at the MFA Boston

Happy almost New Year, shoe lovers. I look forward to seeing what footwear everyone chooses posted over on the forums. There’s no better excuse all year for glitzy fun party shoes.In the meanwhile, I bring you my review of the Boston MFA’s exhibition of shoes, Walk This Way. We’ve mentioned this one in passing before, but I managed to go and see it with my own eyes last week. The show is still up until March 23, 2008, and I’d highly recommend catching it before it disappears. It’s made up of 28 pairs of shoes, mostly from the MFA’s collection.The genius of this show is that it’s not all up in one place. The shoes are scattered throughout the entire museum and all placed in context with the art around them. So, for example, these jeweled pointe shoes are installed next to Edgar Degas’ Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer.

I think this is a great way to set up the show. Most of the shoes fit in perfectly with their chosen sites, and they certainly added a new level of interest to the various museum pieces paired with them. On top of that, the shoes really are scattered through the entire museum, so you get a chance to see a bit of everything in in the MFA collections if you hunt down all the shoes on the map provided.It’s like a little treasure hunt around the galleries, with shoes and art as a fun joint prize to be found.I was limited to camera phone pics, and not all of them came out well, but a selection from my visit is below the jump.

French carved wood sabots with Jean-Francois Millet’s Young Shepherdess (in which the young woman is wearing sabots much like the pair on display).

This is a pair of 17th century shoemaker’s sample shoes, which are smaller than lifesize, and were cutely paired with this Archaic Greek amphora showing a shoemaker at work in ancient Greece. (FYI, if you’re interested in more of the Greek comparisons, there is also a pair of Kevin Garnett’s basketball sneakers and Dice-K’s baseball cleats cleverly displayed next to a case full of ancient Greek athletic objects.)

This duo wasn’t paired with a specific artwork, per se. But they were paired with each other and then set right at the foot of the main staircase, which is currently decorated with sparkling white fairy lights and thereby fit completely with these two girly girly shoes. The black one is a Marc Jacobs 2006 cut-out wedge that echoes the 17th century slap-sole design of the white and pink shoe.

This is a pair of Turkish or Syrian kabkabs next to Claude Monet’s painting of his wife in Japanese costume, La Japonaise, which he painted when Europe was going mad for “Orientalist” style and art.And further on the stilt-shoes theme, we have the next offering:

two variations on the women’s pianella (or chopine), both Venetian and both displayed next to Canaletto’s Bacino di San Marco, Venice.

And rounding out the stilt category, there’s a pair of early 19th century cast iron pattens (strapped on top of working class market-goers’ shoes to elevate them above the muck of the street) next to John Neagle’s painting of Pat Lyon at the Forge, where those pattens would have been made in the first place.

Oldest shoes on display would have to be these Nubian sandals from ca. 379-476 CE. They’re in the Egyptian/Nubian halls, and I’m struck by two things. One, that these leather sandals have lasted for such a long time and two, that they’re really not much different from strappy flat sandals you’d find in any shop today.

The shoe I’d most want to wear myself has got to be this Tatar boot from Eastern Europe in the early 19th century. My pictures of this one didn’t come out at all, so this is the museum’s official image. These would absolutely turn heads in New York today.And, finally, my favorite pairing:

these 2006 Miu Miu wedges perfectly paired with some equally gilt, equally rococo wall panels.All around A+, MFA. Brilliant concept, great shoes, well done!