With material from a media release:
Exhibit A: Investigating Crime And Footwear
Opening At The Bata Shoe Museum
April 18, 2024
Curated by Dr. Alison Matthews David, Professor at the School of Fashion, Toronto Metropolitan University, and Elizabeth Semmelhack, Director and Senior Curator, Bata Shoe Museum, this exhibit looks at the links between footwear and crime investigation.
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| Forensic shoeprints for criminal analysis - image by Zalman952 (CC by-SA 4.0 Deed) |
There are few items more revealing of social history than the clothes we wear, and, I think, shoes in particular. They've been linked to the idea of criminality by cultural associations and myths, as well as by forensic science in the modern era.
The show includes such gems as the shoes worn by Henry Edward Vickers, aka Flannel Foot, in the 1930s in the UK. He'd wrap his shoes in flannel so as to avoid scrutiny from the growing field of forensics of the era. However, he tended to leave strips of the fabric at the crime scene.
Exhibit A: Investigating Crime and Footwear examines both the development of footwear forensics as a means of solving crime, and the social constructions of criminality from the nineteenth century to today. It also considers how clothing and footwear play roles in cultural ideas of criminality, informed by assumptions and bias.
It will take visitors on a journey to sleuth out the central but complex role of footwear in crime, policing, the judiciary system and our cultural ideas of criminality.
Special Events
- FREE Community Weekend on April 20 and 21 with free admission all weekend to celebrate the opening.
- Dramatic Soles: A Beginner Playwriting Workshops welcomes new and emerging playwrights to explore the writing process as inspired by footwear and crime with Canadian Playwright Steven Elliott Jackson on April 27.
- Participants will learn play constructing, formatting, character construction, plot development, and theme devices that make great plays.
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