The Future Now exhibition at SAM. Photo by Ryan Gamma.

Footwear has long been a central figure in popular culture. From Cinderella’s slipper to Michael Jordan’s Air Jordans to the P.F. Flyers promised to make the characters “run faster and jump higher” in the seminal coming-of-age film The Sandlot, shoes have always held a special place in the public’s collective heart. From around 9000 BC, humans have crafted footwear—first out of deerskin and animal hides, then from wood and other materials, eventually landing on leather and rubber—with the concept behind it growing from functional to fashionable and everything in between.

The Sarasota Art Museum (SAM) is celebrating that heritage and its progression into the future with its exhibition Future Now: Virtual Sneakers to Cutting-Edge Kicks. The exhibition, on view until May 4, is organized by Toronto’s Bata Shoe Museum and the American Federation of the Arts and features over 70 pieces from the Bata Shoe Museum and loans from other collectors and institutions. While Future Now does include many futuristic, cutting-edge shoe designs, the exhibition also tracks how shoes were made before the Industrial Revolution.

“The exhibition includes some of the early tools used for shoemaking like the hammers and wooden pegs for attaching soles. There’s a case that has all of these items that were used for toolmaking in the 19th century,” says Virginia Shearer, executive director of SAM. “Shoes would get more complex over the course of the 1800s all the way to the first sneaker, which was a technological innovation that came through the United States.” After the Civil War, there was an explosion in popularity of sports like tennis and basketball that required speciality shoes. By 1892, the first rubber-soled shoes—or sneakers—were born.

Future Now also addresses issues of sustainability and accessibility in its featured pieces. The exhibition includes 3D-printed shoes, footwear made from recycled ocean plastics and mushroom leather and sneakers designed specifically for the meta-verse. The EKTO One Robotic VR Boots allow the wearer to walk in virtual reality while the Undercurrent P Virtual Prototype bring high fashion to footwear.

“There’s a sneaker from 2021 called the Nike Go FlyEase that was created for people with limited mobility. It functions similarly to a ski boot—it can be locked into place and slipped back off without the use of hands or lacing—and I think the fact that Nike and shoe designers are thinking about accessibility is terrific,” says Shearer.

February 9 to May 5, Sarasota Art Museum, 1001 S Tamiami Trail

The Future Now exhibition at SAM. Photo by Ryan Gamma.

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