Eat your heart out (Sonja Bata and the Bata Shoe Museum)

Abstract

I asked for an example. "You mean, an example I want to tell you? Hmm. Well, one of the things we've recently been going through is, how many pairs of ruby slippers [from The Wizard of Oz] existed?" Bata said six, Jonathan Walford (the museum curator, who works under Bata and [Edward Maeder]) said eight. Then Maeder said he met a woman in L.A. whose mother did the beading for MGM, who claims she made thirteen pairs. The Bata Museum doesn't even own a pair of ruby slippers. It owns a John Lennon Beatle boot, Robert Redford's cowboy boots, Margot Fonteyn's toe shoes, both Elton John's rhinestone-studded and his silver-monogrammed platform boots, Terry Fox's single running shoe and the cleats former Toronto Blue Jay Dave Winfield wore when he scored the winning run in the '92 World Series--but no ruby slippers. The ruby slipper debate marched on for two weeks. "The good side of these discussions is, we're all really involved," says curator Walford, a pleasant, dark-haired fellow who punctuates most of his sentences with a deep chuckle. "I'm incredibly honest, which works really well with Mrs. Bata. Because if we disagree, we disagree. And her best quality is, she never holds a grudge. It's actually a trait of her I'm trying to copy."