BRATTLEBORO — The Brattleboro Museum & Art Center (BMAC) presents “Unboxed: A Cultural History of Sneakers,” an online talk by Elizabeth Semmelhack, on Thursday, Feb. 25, at 7 p.m.
This free event is presented in connection with the installation “Andy Yoder: Overboard.”
Semmelhack will interlace the history of sneakers with stories of technological innovation, complex cultural politics, and shifting ideas of gender, tracing how these influences transformed sneakers into cultural icons.
The creative director and senior curator of the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto, Semmelhack has curated more than 30 exhibitions, including the traveling exhibition “Out of the Box: The Rise of Sneaker Culture.”
Her most recent books include Collab: Sneakers x Culture, Dior by Roger Vivier, Shoes: The Meaning of Style, Out of the Box: The Rise of Sneaker Culture, and Standing Tall: The Curious History of Men in Heels.
Her work focuses on the intersections of fashion, economics, and gender with a particular interest in the history of footwear, and she is widely quoted in the media, from The New York Times to Vogue.
On view at BMAC through Saturday, March 6, Andy Yoder's installation “Overboard” was inspired by a 1990 incident in which five shipping containers containing 61,820 Nike sneakers were lost at sea.
The iconic sneaker became the template for Yoder's showroom of 240 Air Jordan 5 replicas, each one made from recycled packaging or promotional materials.
Yoder's work has been exhibited at the International Print Center New York, the Saatchi Gallery, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Reykjavik Art Museum. He has been commissioned to create work for numerous public installations, including for the Columbus Museum of Art, the ESPN Zone in New York, and Hilltop Montessori School in Brattleboro.