Luis Valenzuela

MIAMI Shoe Museum / Founder/Director/Chief Curator

Luis Valenzuela was born in Caracas, Venezuela, to a family of four generations of artists. Master Teaching Artist, Visual Artist, fashion designer, Journalist, and a few more credentials, Valenzuela has devoted his entire career to Art Education and expressing art through creative and unique mediums, including fabric and paper manipulation to build textures. Many of his extraordinary pieces have captured the eyes of interior designers and architects and landed their way into corporate and individual art collections worldwide.

Valenzuela is also a pioneer of green art and eco-friendly fashion design. He founded EarthDayMiami in 2007, EcoArtFashion© in 2010, and created the first EcoArtFashion WeekTM in the world in 2010–a platform to express the state of the ethical and new sustainable fashion world, which since 2013 changed to The Art
of Fashion ShowTM. This experience portrays the timelessness of fashion as art. In 2016, he created an innovative concept, The Creators Lab in Wynwood Miami, a New Media Art research center for art, design, and technology. Valenzuela’s impeccable “ART TO WEAR” collections have been showcased during
Mercedes Benz New York Fashion Week. His unique and creative pieces have been featured in international fashion magazines such as Vogue, Elle, and WWD.

With more than 30 years as an Art Instructor, a journey he started in his original city, Caracas, sharing experiences with his students, in 2014, Valenzuela started inspiring more kids and teens through a unique US Non-profit organization “Arts for Learning” Miami Chapter, leading after school programs in the Public Education System, and other institutions, introducing students to the New Media Arts world, a creative way to combine Art, Design, and Technology and also shearing his innovative lesson plans for Arts Integration and the 21 Century Skills program, a way to engage students in a creative process and enjoy learning using the Arts as a tool. In 2018, Valenzuela joined the Education Department at the Coral Gables Museum as
the Director of Education, bringing his unique way of educating visitors. In 2020, with an established career in visual arts, education, and his passion for Music and Opera, Luis Valenzuela joined the Florida Grand Opera (FGO) staff as a Director of Education, in charge of the company’s programs in the areas of
community relations, and education, creating unique students’ and teachers’ experiences with opera through access to the FGO world-class productions. In 2022, Valenzuela completed his studies as a Master Teaching Artist, a title that opened new doors to continue his passion for arts education.

Valenzuela has successfully worked with distinguished institutions such as Lowe Art Museum, Miami Art Museum now PAMM, Chelsea Art Museum NYC, Patricia and Phillip Frost Museum of Science, The Kennedy Center Washington DC, and Holland-based Virtual Shoe Museum, Art fairs such as Design
Miami, Art Miami, Art Wynwood and New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA), and private labels like SWAROVSKI, Neiman Marcus, Blomingdale’s, TAG Heuer, Grolsch, among others.

Valenzuela’s artistic journey prioritizes innovation over tradition, yet he acknowledges history as a revered and invaluable tool. He believes that studying history reveals how past events have shaped the present. Valenzuela’s inquisitive nature and involvement in fashion, art, and education have allowed him to curate one of the world’s finest and most captivating private shoe collections. This collection is a rich resource for historical research across various facets of humanity, reflecting his passion for documenting social history.

Since 2010, Valenzuela has been collecting historical shoes, amassing nearly 800 pairs from designers around the globe. This collection, named “Memories,” is a tribute to design history and a means to educate future generations, inspiring new ideas by bridging the past and the present. In 2022, Valenzuela founded the MIAMI Shoe Museum (MSM) as a virtual resource. The MSM, the virtual home of his historic shoe collection, showcases over 800 shoes and related artifacts, embodying Valenzuela’s vision of preserving history through footwear. In July 2024, the MSM inaugurated the Research Center, a unique space in downtown Miami dedicated to the museum’s mission of conserving, researching, and educating about footwear’s rich artistic and cultural heritage.