Art Explora Festival - The world's first museum boat to sail around the Mediterranean into 2026

by Art Explora Festival 22 Feb 2024 02:21 PST 21-31 March 2024

Art Explora Festival - The world's first museum boat to sail around the Mediterranean into 2026 © Art Explora Festival

On 1 February 2024, the Art Explora Foundation announced the official launch of its travelling cultural festival that will sail around the Mediterranean into 2026 on the world's first museum boat: a remarkably large-size catamaran with a welcoming capacity of up to 2000 visitors on board a day, free of charge.

The festival will take place on board the boat, in partnership with the Louvre Museum, IRCAM x Centre Pompidou, as well as quayside in exhibition pavilions designed by Jean-Michel Wilmotte and in a range of venues in the host cities. Following a preinaugural visit to Malta from 21 to 31 March and a stopover in Venice during the Biennale, the inaugural port of call will be in Marseille from 6 to 18 June 2024.

Promoting access to culture

The Art Explora Festival is a travelling festival sailing across the world's oceans and seas on its museum boat to bring visitors innovative artistic and cultural experiences free of charge and open to all. The first-ever adventure reflects the Art Explora Foundation's goal to promote increasingly widespread and inclusive access to the arts.

From Spring 2024 to Autumn 2026, the museum boat and its Art Explora Festival will call at 20 ports in 15 countries around the Mediterranean, providing artists, exhibition curators, institutions, non-profits and NG0s the opportunity to reach out to all audiences around a festival whose content is rooted in the heritage and issues of each country visited. Collectively, they will imagine a new vision of the Mediterranean - a cradle of great civilisations and a melting pot of many cultures.

World's first museum boat

The year 2024 marks the "kick-off" for Art Explora's one-of-a-kind travelling festival, held at sea - on a museum boat designed by Axel de Beaufort and Guillaume Verdier - and on land - in a village with exhibition pavilions designed by Jean-Michel Wilmotte.

The remarkably large-size museum boat measuring 47 metres in length, 18 metres in width with a 55-metre mast and a sail designed by artist Laure Prouvost will bear a universal, unifying message. A symbol of escape and discovery, boats hold a unique component of adventure and imagination.

Sailing from port to port - places of trade par excellence - the catamaran will connect worlds, cultures and people.

Frédéric Jousset, Art Explora Foundation president stated: "Mobility and artistic creation are powerful tools for shifting viewpoints as well as sharing images and stories that shape different relationships with the world. Climbing aboard a boat is an experience in and of itself, and it will be all the more special when visitors discover unique cultural and artistic offerings on board and quayside."

The Art Explora Festival programme

The festival will take place on the museum boat as well as quayside in exhibition pavilions and friendly, welcoming areas designed by Jean-Michel Wilmotte, and in a range of venues in the heart of the host cities, with a programme of events combining exhibitions, virtual reality experiences, performances, lectures, film screenings and concerts, etc.

The programme will include three parts:

Exhibitions on board the museum boat
Exhibitions in the quayside exhibition pavilions
An exciting programme designed by a local curator at each port of call and held at the Agora - a performance area set up quayside - or in different venues of the port-of-call city

1. On board the museum boat:

"Present" - an immersive exhibition with the Louvre's outstanding collaboration, highlighting female figures in Mediterranean civilisations. An experience divided into two parts with a film to be viewed on the aft deck and an immersive experience in the main gallery.
A Mediterranean soundscape designed by Centre Pompidou's x IRCAM, to be explored on the upper deck.

2. In the quayside exhibition pavilions:

Central Pavilion with the contemporary art exhibition "Under the Azure" takes a look at the history, myths, vegetal and animal species in the Mediterranean Sea (bringing together some 20 artists).
Photo Pavilion with the "Undertrow" exhibition devoted to migrations in the Arab world and the issue of hospitality (approx. 15 artists).
Virtual Reality (VR) Pavilion offering several experiences dealing with the Mediterranean: a series of exclusive experiences produced by Ubisoft and other experiences about Mediterranean heritage and topics such as female artists or exile.

3. Exciting programme

Each port of call will also welcome a multidisciplinary festival over a 10-day period at the Agora in the Festival village as well as in iconic sites around the city and in partner institutions. Invited by Art Explora, an internationally-renowned local curator will develop a programme of events with performances, concerts, lectures, film screenings, workshops and gatherings on different topics directly linked to a local approach taking on a new form in each port of call.

As part of the Festival programme, "Ocean Week-ends" will be organised in each of the Festival port-of-call cities, including round tables inviting researchers, scientists and artists to exchange on the topic of the ocean and the climate emergency. The programme is designed within the framework of the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science (2021-2030) that will be given pride of place in Nice in June 2025 during the United Nations Ocean Conference, organised by the French government.

In each port of call, the Festival will also feature a public-speaking programme christened "VOICES", which will give the floor to inspiring speakers, committed to major issues facing the Mediterranean. The programmer, Alain Weber, will also be organising a series of concerts featuring contemporary and traditional Mediterranean music throughout the Festival's journey.

Within the framework of the festival, Art Explora and The Island Club will be initiating a programme of cross-border residencies providing an opportunity for the artists selected by the Festival's curators to be welcomed from host-city to host-city and to support them in developing a project related to the social, cultural and ecological issues in the Mediterranean, with the aim of creating a long-term, strong and interdependent network of partner residencies.

A festival for all audiences

Audience engagement is a major challenge for the travelling festival, which will provide access and participation modes facilitating key encounters between art, artists and audiences.

Visitor services will be adapted to all audiences, combining human outreach and digital tools. Over 2000 children from the city's primary and middle schools will be welcomed for guided tours in Marseille. A large number of not-for-profit social organisations will be welcomed in the same conditions.

Outreach initiatives will include artist-led workshops and awareness-raising about contemporary issues in the Mediterranean as well as tours beyond the museum walls to discover the cultural history and urban design of each port of call.

Marseille: the Festival's inaugural port of call from 6 to 18 June

As this cultural odyssey's inaugural port of call, Marseille will host an exciting, multidisciplinary programme including performances, concerts, film screenings, dance productions, culinary experiences, workshops and poetic readings, open to all and free of charge.

The artistic programme created by Martha Kirszenbaum will explore the cultural links between Marseille and some ports of call where the boat will be stopping in the coming months, including Beirut, Algiers and Tangiers. It will reflect on the region's popular culture characterised by a combination of cultural practices related to music, dance, film, cuisine and sports, on cultural exchanges stemming from migration and colonisation, and last but not least, on the oral history resulting from these cultural transfers of people, languages, objects and customs.

Taking place at the Agora - the village's central stage located quayside - and in various Marseille neighbourhoods, the project will encompass practices related to art as well as popular cultures from the Arab world. It will be held in public and private venues (museums, art centres, cinemas), and in local, everyday places of gathering (such as hammams, cabarets, etc.).

2024 ports of call