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The festival
The Art Explora Festival is an itinerant festival that travels the world's seas and oceans with its museum boat, offering innovative artistic and cultural experiences accessible free of charge.
The festival takes place aboard the world's first museum ship, docked in exhibition pavilions and in various venues in the heart of host cities, with a program combining exhibitions, virtual reality, performances, conferences, film screenings, concerts...
From spring 2024 to autumn 2026, the museum boat will travel to 15 countries in the Mediterranean, cradle of great civilizations and melting pot of many cultures, bringing together artists, curators, cultural, associative and educational organizations who, collectively, will imagine a new vision of the Mediterranean.
The museum boat
This catamaran is the world's first museum boat. Designed by architects Axel de Beaufort and Guillaume Verdier, it is 47m long and 55m high. The boat was built at the Perini Navi shipyard in Italy. It can accommodate 2,000 people a day on board, and features an immersive exhibition designed with the exceptional collaboration of the Musée du Louvre, a sound experience developed with Ircam, and onboard artist residencies.
Wilmotte & Associés Architectes
Exhibition pavilions
Accompanying the museum boat, a nomadic and innovative exhibition space, designed by Wilmotte & Associés Architectes, is set up on the quaysides of the ports visited. Comprising exhibition pavilions, a central stage - the Agora - and convivial spaces, it offers a rich program adapted to all audiences.
Dockside and city programming
At each stop, a local curator organizes a unique and varied cultural program in partnership with local institutions, associations and artists:
- A 10-day program of exhibitions, events, film screenings and live performances in each port and in the city.
- Close collaboration with local institutions, showcasing local and established Mediterranean artists as well as emerging talents, focusing on contemporary Mediterranean issues.
- Series of workshops and programs for the general public designed in collaboration with local associations
- "Ocean Week-ends" : Researchers, scientists and artists will be invited to exchange on the topic of the ocean and the climate emergency, accompanied by film screenings and the transmission of sound compositions.
Journey through time and space
Discover recent virtual reality creations connected to the themes of the Art Explora Festival: heritage, art culture, migrations...
Undertow
This exhibition explores the Mediterranean in the context of migration and exile, highlighting the work of emerging photographers from the region.
Under The Azure
Under the Azure is an exhibition paying tribute to the Mediterranean Sea, to the imagery it evokes, to the awe it inspires, and to the ancient and contemporary myths associated with it.
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Aboard the museum boat
Discover 2 experiences on board: "Presents", the immersive exhibition with the exceptional collaboration of the Louvre Museum as well as the sound journey in the Mediterranean created by Ircam x Centre Pompidou. Sail by Laure Prouvost.
Voile, You Would Sea Where To Go by Laure Prouvost
Discover Laure Prouvost's new commission, IDEALLY YOU WOULD SEA WHERE TO GO - HERE WE DREAM OF NO MORE FRONT TEARS. These phrases written on the sails of the museum boat, produced in a specialized workshop in Brittany, are based on a hybrid play on words between English and French.
Mediterranean wonders
Embark on a journey to the Golden Age of Alexandria, Athens, and Venice! This brand-new experience, developed exclusively for the Art Explora Festival by Ubisoft, allows you to dive into the past at the heart of 3 iconic cities at the height of their splendor.
Millennial Cities
Millennial Cities offers you an emotional dive into the heart of six iconic monuments from the Arab world, currently threatened, damaged, or destroyed by recent conflicts. Discover the architectural treasures of the cities of Mosul and Aleppo, along with the archaeological sites of Palmyra and Leptis Magna, symbols of the multicultural history of the civilizations of the Middle East. A vital digital testimony for the preservation and transmission of the world's heritage!
(Hi)story of a painting: light in shadow
Discover the extraordinary story of one of the most famous Baroque artists: Artemisia Gentileschi.
Meet Mortaza
At the age of 24, Mortaza had to flee his own country, Afghanistan, because he was sentenced to death by the religious authorities. Forced into exile, through a dangerous and clandestine road, Mortaza will reach Europe to join the country he wished to ask for asylum: France.
At the dawn of art
Humanity’s first masterpiece was created 36,000 years ago in Ardèche, France. Within Chauvet Cave lies thousands of drawings - traces of our past - enclosed forever. The Dawn of Art is a VR experience, including both an immersive film and a virtual visit of the cave that invites you to meet your prehistoric ancestors, the first humans who ventured in a deep subterranean world and left their marks preserved on the walls.
Island of the dead
A journey out of time, from an ordinary apartment to our final destination, guided by Charon, the smuggler of the Underworld. The horizon is the same for everyone, immutable, inevitable. The question is, in all times, in all civilizations, always the same: what is there after? Is there only something?
Off-site
In this new episode, the Sahab Museum descends to earth from heaven, unable to bear its grief at the destruction. It lands in a desert landscape, where it suffers from its earthly form and the loss of the works of art that once inhabited it. The tigress in turn descends from the sky to help him reconstitute his collections of paintings and invite the public to care for the museum with her, rebuilding its memory and the body of work entrusted to her. A repair operation for a museum-archive. The tigress previously brought down to earth from the world of imagination is this time the guide for an interactive virtual reality headset experience.