Dutch leather and shoe museum faces fight for life
13/07/2017
At the end of 2016, former chief executive of the museum, Wim Blok, left after almost 30 years in the job. The museum closed for refurbishment in January 2017 with the promise of a full reopening in 2019 and of small, temporary exhibitions in Waalwijk in the meantime.
Something else that happened last year was that the museum merged with international leather and footwear innovation and education centre SLEM. This is at the heart of the new problem because the authorities in Waalwijk have decided not to continue offering financial support to SLEM.
SLEM, run by a well known figure in the world of footwear design and innovation, Nicoline van Enter, will continue its work under new auspices, relying on no public money, but only on private investment and the money it makes from its own education and seminar programmes.
The problem for the museum is that, as one foundation, if the city of Waalwijk forces the existing SLEM business to close, it will put the museum’s future under threat too.
“The authorities want to go back to a former set-up and run the museum without SLEM,” Dutch Leather and Shoe Museum curator, Inge Specht, told World Leather on July 13. “But we are one foundation now, following the merger, and the implications for the museum in all this are not clear. Financial pressures will continue and there is a huge chance they will start to sell parts of our collection to raise money.”
Supporters have set up a petition to try to convince the city of Waalwijk to reconsider. They have said they will greatly welcome signatures from people in the leather and footwear sectors all around the world as a gesture of solidarity.
Image shows shoes designed by Roger Vivier for the coronation of the current monarch of the UK, Queen Elizabeth, which went on show at the museum in Waalwijk as part of a Vivier retrospective in 2015. The coronation was in 1953, the same year that the Dutch Leather and Shoe Museum was founded.
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