Bucks County Stuart Weitzman shoe exhibit displays history and culture

09/22/2022 | 4:53 p.m

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  Aniya Faulcon
  

  

  Aniya Faulcon is a Smart Talk Host/Producer for WITF. She has a passion for shedding light on unique people, experiences and perspectives within the community.

  She previously worked as a People and Social Trends Reporter/Video Anchor for LancasterOnline | LNP News. During her time there, she created video packages, provided Facebook Live coverage of community events and wrote data-driven stories using census data and feature stories about local leaders, non-profit organizations, events and people with unique talents and experiences in Lancaster County.

  Aniya also worked at WMAR ABC 2 News as a sales assistant and at AFRO American Newspapers as an executive assistant and media correspondent. Aniya did an internship at WEAA Gospel Grace 88.9 and worked at her alma mater’s radio station, WWPJ, at Point Park University, where she acquired skills and a passion for radio.

  Aniya grew up in Baltimore, Maryland and attended the Baltimore School for the Arts for high school, majoring in acting. Continuing to hone her skills and passion for storytelling, she graduated from Point Park University in 2018 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Acting and Broadcast Reporting. Aniya is eager to continue her storytelling journey in her role at WITF as she aims to shed light on real people and true stories in Pennsylvania across a variety of media.

Susan Walsh/AP photo

Camila Alves McConaughey holds the bright green Converse tennis shoes worn by Maite Yuleana Rodriguez, 10, who was a victim of Uvalde shootings when Matthew McConaughey, a native of Uvalde, Texas, met White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre , at the daily briefing at the White House in Washington, Tuesday, June 7, 2022.

Air date: September 22, 2022

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Stuart Weitzman, American shoe designer and founder of the international high-end shoe brand Stuart Weitzman, gained worldwide attention through the use of unconventional and unique materials such as vinyl, cork, wallpaper and gold. His shoe designs are sold in more than seventy countries worldwide.

The shoe business has been a part of Weitzman’s family since Seymour Weitzman, his father, who was also a shoemaker and ran a company called Seymour Shoes, where Weitzman began designing shoes and later branched off to continue his legacy and start his own label .

Laura Turner Igo, chief curator at the Michener Art Museum in Bucks County, joined us on Thursday intelligent speaking to discuss their upcoming Walk This Way: Footwear from the Stuart Weitzman Collection of Historic Shoes exhibition, which begins Saturday and runs through January 15^th to honor Weitzman’s legacy and the history and importance of his shoes.

The exhibit, inherited from the New York Historical Society by the Michener Art Museum, will feature more than a hundred pairs of shoes from the private collection of Stuart Weitzman and Jane Gershon Weitzman. The museum also complemented the exhibit with six pairs of shoes made by local designers from the greater Philadelphia area and Bucks County. Focusing on the women who designed, manufactured, sold and collected shoes, the exhibition explores how shoes have transcended their purpose to become representations of culture and expressions of complicated meanings of femininity, power and aspiration.

Igo said shoes help us walk and navigate the world.

“We make choices when we choose the shoes we want to wear, and those choices tell us who we are individually and culturally, and also, as the exhibition argues, tell us about history,” Igo said.

She also said she hopes people will come to the show to see the shoes and stay for the story.

Visit michenerartmuseum.org for more information about the exhibition.