SONS Museum

SONS Museum (Shoes Or No Shoes) is a museum in Kruishoutem, Belgium, dedicated to contemporary art connected to shoes as its subject. Founded in 2009, the institution occupies a converted 1973 art gallery and presents a multidisciplinary collection that spans ethnographic footwear, designer shoes, sneaker culture, and artworks by internationally recognized artists who have transformed the shoe into an art object. The museum's name invites visitors to question whether shoes processed by artists constitute art, reflecting its conceptual engagement with the boundaries between craft, design, and fine art.

The museum emerged from the convergence of several shoe-related collections and the initiative of four key figures: shoe manufacturer Dirk Vanderschueren, shoe collector William "Boy" Habraken, and the shoemaker couple Veerle Swenters and Pierre Bogaerts. Habraken, born in Eindhoven, Netherlands, at the end of World War II into a shoe-business family, established his own import and wholesale footwear company at age twenty. His business travels to over 120 countries led him to collect shoes worn with traditional native costumes, with particular attention to materials, manufacturing techniques, use, age, and local nomenclature. On 19 September 2006, Guinness World Records recognized Habraken's collection as the largest collection of tribal and ethnographical shoes in the world. The museum itself was founded by Cortina N.V. and opened in 2009 in a substantially renovated building, the former art gallery Emile Veranneman from 1973.

The collection is organized thematically across several distinct areas. The ethnographic collection comprises approximately 3,100 pairs of footwear from 155 countries and regions, including rare pieces from North American Indians, Eskimos, African tribes, Berbers, Bedouins, Mongols, and the Ottoman and pre-Inca empires. The modern art collection stems from an art project initiated by Swenters and Bogaerts, in which renowned artists transformed shoes into art objects. The designers collection features unique examples from twentieth-century shoe designers. Additional holdings include a sneaker collection, cartoons by Belgian and Dutch comic artists, a library with shoe-related information, and short stories by various writers. The museum also maintains a collection of approximately 1,200 pieces of shoe-dedicated art from the private collection of Swenters and Bogaerts.

The ethnographic collection's Guinness World Record certification underscores its global significance. The modern art collection includes works by major artists such as Georg Baselitz, sculptor and performance artist Jan Fabre, land artist Richard Long, Belgian artist Panamarenko, Arte Povera figure Michelangelo Pistoletto, Gerhard Richter, and Pop artist Tom Wesselmann. The designers collection holds creations by André Perugia, Salvatore Ferragamo, Christian Louboutin, and Manolo Blahnik. The collection also encompasses anomaly contributions from choreographer Merce Cunningham and musical instrument inventor Yuri Landman. Cartoon works are present by Jean-Marc van Tol, Jean-Claude Servais, Kim Duchateau, Lamelos, and Bill Griffith, while literary contributions include texts by Geert van Istendael, Kees van Kooten, Adriaan van Dis, Midas Dekkers, Renate Dorrestein, and Cees Noteboom.

The museum is located in Kruishoutem, within the Arrondissement of Oudenaarde in East Flanders, Belgium. It occupies the former art gallery Emile Veranneman, originally constructed in 1973. For the 2009 conversion into a shoe museum, the existing building was clad with lead plates, a substantial architectural intervention that transformed the gallery's exterior appearance. This renovation created a dedicated exhibition space specifically designed to house the thematic presentation of the various collections.

SONS Museum is situated in Kruishoutem, Belgium, with its website at https://www.shoesornoshoes.com/. The institution functions as both a museum and exhibition space exclusively devoted to the shoe. Its founding by Cortina N.V. with the collaboration of industry figures and collectors established it as a specialized cultural destination within the landscape of Belgian museums. The museum's location in the former Emile Veranneman gallery places it within a region with existing art-world infrastructure, repurposed here for a collection that bridges commercial design, ethnography, and contemporary fine art.