An interesting field trip

Although the weather was very cold and we didn't have tickets to the ROM on Friday, we changed our plan to visit the Gardiner Museum and Bata Shoe Museum.


The Gardiner Museum is located across from the ROM. It was founded in 1984, and the collection was donated by George and Helen Gardiner. Today, the collection in the Gardiner Museum exceeds 3,000 historical and contemporary pieces, including ancient American vessels and porcelain of Asia and Europe.


We visited the Chinese porcelain exhibition, where the ceramics date to the Tang, Ming, and Qing Dynasty. According to the caption, the cobalt pigment was from Iran .



We also appreciated some western porcelain that was imitated Chinese porcelain. It was very fun!


After we had a break at Tim Hortons, we went to the Bata Shoe Museum. It is a special museum. It has collected 12,500 artifacts: African sandals, Chinese traditional shoes, western fashion shoes and so on, and it tells us the evolution of footwear and its symbolism through the ages.


We didn't have much time to appreciate each shoe in detail, including its time, its outstanding designs, its culture, its materials and its unusual shoemaking skills.


While some museums can help us to understand one country or one area's culture, special museums for ceramic art and shoe museum can help us to learn ceramic and footwear history and development. We can keep going back to learn more.