Northampton Museum and Art Gallery is a public

museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make th ...

Northampton Northampton () is a market town and civil parish in the East Midlands of England, on the River Nene, north-west of London and south-east of Birmingham. The county town of Northamptonshire, Northampton is one of the largest towns in England ...

, England. The museum is owned and run by

West Northamptonshire Council West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth. Etymology The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some R ...

and houses one of the largest collection of shoes in the world, with over 15,000 pairs,"Northampton's world famous shoe museum reopens after refurbishment"

BBC News BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broadc ...

, Northampton, 14 April 2012. which was designated by

Arts Council England Arts Council England is an arm's length non-departmental public body of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. It is also a registered charity. It was formed in 1994 when the Arts Council of Great Britain was divided into three s ...

as being of local, national and international importance. The town's museum was established in 1865, but moved to the current site in 1884, where it shared its space with the town's library. After the library moved in 1910, the museum took over the whole building. The museum was extended in 1935 and again in 1988. In 2012, the museum was refurbished for better access. The museum closed between 2017 and 2021 for a major £6.7m expansion project. The new museum reopened in July 2021, more than a year later than planned due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Exhibits

The museum has been collecting footwear since the 1870s and now boasts the largest collection of shoes in the world, which was designated as being of international importance by the

Museums, Libraries and Archives Council The Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) was until May 2012 a non-departmental public body and registered charity in England with a remit to promote improvement and innovation in the area of museums, libraries and archives. Its functio ...

in 1997. The ground floor is given over to the display of some of the museum's 12,000 pairs of shoes, spanning the period from the Ancient Egyptians to the present day. There are also two galleries dedicated to footwear: Life & Sole focuses on the history of shoemaking and contains a re-creation of an old shoe factory; Followers of Fashion concentrates on the history of fashions in footwear throughout the centuries. Some of the paintings on display reflect the museum's focus on footwear, such as the 17th-19th century Dutch and Flemish works by

Jan Miel Jan Miel (1599 in Beveren-Waas – April 1664 in Turin) was a Flemish painter and engraver who was active in Italy. He initially formed part of the circle of Dutch and Flemish genre painters in Rome who are referred to as the 'Bambocciant ...

and

Hendrik van Oort Hendrik van Oort (6 August 1775 in Utrecht – 17 February 1847 in Utrecht) was a 19th-century painter from the Northern Netherlands. Among his best known works are ''In the Meadow'' and ''The Shoemaker'', the latter of which is on display at th ...

featuring cobblers, shoemakers and shoeshiners. As long-time Keeper of the Boot and Shoe Collection, curator

June Swann June Marion Swann MBE (born 1929) is a British footwear historian, formerly the Keeper of the Boot and Shoe Collection at the Northampton Museum and Art Gallery in England, where she worked for 38 years from 1950 to 1988. In the late 1950s she ...

played a significant role in its development. She began in 1950, and worked there for 38 years. () The second and third floors of the museum house exhibits about Northampton's history and displays of Oriental ceramics and Italian art from the 15th to the 18th century.

Sekhemka statue controversy

The museum conducted a controversial sale of an Ancient Egyptian statue of Sekhemka in July 2014, with questions relating to the ownership and the ethics of selling the statue being raised by various organizations. The statue was sold to an unknown buyer for £15.76m, which broke the existing world record for Ancient Egyptian artwork at auction. On 1 August 2014, Northampton Museums had its accreditation removed by the

, which ruled that the sale broke the required standards for how museums manage their collections; loss of accreditation includes ineligibility for a range of arts grants and funding, and is in effect until at the earliest, August 2019.

References

External links

* {{authority control Buildings and structures in Northampton Local museums in Northamptonshire Tourist attractions in Northampton Shoe museums Art museums and galleries in Northamptonshire City museums in the United Kingdom

Exhibits

Sekhemka statue controversy

See also

References

External links