What Nike and New Balance fail to grasp, the Out of the Box exhibition curator Elizabeth Semmelhack told me, is that “the cultural meaning behind sneakers is a constantly evolving dialogue between the people who produce the sneakers and the people who wear them.” Fittingly, she said that although the New Balance shoes remain on display for the moment, that could change depending on visitor response. “I can understand the ownership that brands want to have over their own message, but the discursive nature of branding is clearly open to manipulation,” Semmelhack added. As the exhibition shows, over the last 200 years, sneakers have signified everything from national identity, race, and class to masculinity and criminality; put simply, they are magnets for social and political meaning, intended or otherwise, in a way that sets them apart from other types of footwear.

Performance-enhancing, rubber-soled athletic shoes date back to the early 19th century, when they were primarily worn for tennis. From the beginning, however, these so-called “sneakers”—named for their noiseless footfall—were tainted by connotations of delinquency, being the proverbial choice of pranksters, muggers, and burglars. This reputation would prove difficult to shake: an incendiary 1979 New York Times article was headlined: “For Joggers and Muggers, the Trendy Sneaker.”

It was not until the 1920s that industrialization made sneakers widely available and affordable. Once an emblem of privileged leisure on the tennis court, the canvas-and-rubber high-top adapted to the new, egalitarian team sport of basketball. The Converse Rubber Shoe Company—founded in 1908 as a producer of galoshes—introduced its first basketball shoe, the All Star, in 1917. In a stroke of marketing genius, Converse enlisted basketball coaches and players as brand ambassadors, including Chuck Taylor, the first athlete to have a sneaker named after him.

Politics, however, fueled the rise of sneakers as much as athletics. As Semmelhack explained, “the fragile peace of World War I increased interest in physical culture, which became linked to rising nationalism and eugenics. Countries encouraged their citizens to exercise not just for physical perfection but to prepare for the next war. It’s ironic that the sneaker became one of the most democratized forms of footwear at the height of fascism.” Mass exercise rallies were features of fascist life in Germany, Japan, and Italy. But sneakers could also represent resistance. Jesse Owens’ dominance at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games stung the event’s Nazi hosts even more because he trained in German-made Dassler running shoes. (The company was later split between the two Dassler brothers, who renamed their shares Puma and Adidas).