The Art Explora Festival and its museum boat will dock in Piraeus, close to Athens

The Art Explora Festival © Art Explora

As part of its commitment to sharing culture with as many people as possible, Art Explora launched in 2024 the Art Explora Festival, a travelling festival that sails across the seas and oceans on board the world's first museum boat.

It brings visitors innovative artistic and cultural experiences free of charge on board the museum boat, as well as quayside and in a range of venues in the host cities. The programming includes immersive visual, sound, and virtual reality experiences, exhibitions, and a rich live programme featuring concerts, dance, discussions, and workshops.

After welcoming over 300 000 visitors across its previous Mediterranean stopovers — in Valletta (Malta), Venice (Italy), Marseille (France), Tangier and Rabat (Morocco), Málaga (Spain), Durrës (Albania), Nice (France), the Art Explora Festival will head to Greece following its stop in Rijeka (Croatia). From 3 to 12 October 2025, the festival and its unique museum boat will dock at Piraeus Port for the very first time with a programme curated both by Art Explora and Katerina Tselou, Greek curator.

"Mobility and artistic creation are powerful tools to help challenge perspectives and share images and stories to create different relationships with the world. Boarding a boat is an experience in itself; it's even more remarkable when you find unique artistic and cultural endeavours on that boat, as well as quayside." - Frédéric Jousset, Art Explora Founder and President

Programme of the Art Explora Festival in Piraeus, Athens from 3 To 12 October

The festival is hosted aboard the world's first museum boat, as well as quayside in various exhibition pavilions and communal spaces. The festival offers packages tailored to all audiences, with dedicated tours and workshops for schools and local groups.

With the capacity to host up to 2,000 visitors per day, this 47-meterlong and 55-meter-high sailing catamaran is the world's first traveling museum boat. Designed by architects Alex de Beaufort and Guillaume Verdier and built at the Perini Navi shipyard in Italy, it meets the most ambitious technological requirements, as well as those for welcoming the public on board.

Immersive experiences on board the museum boat

• On the upper deck: An immersive audio experience centred around the richness and diversity of the Mediterranean, designed and produced by IRCAM (the French Institute for Research in Acoustics/ Music at the Pompidou Centre in Paris) and Ircam Amplify.
• Inside the boat: Travel through time and space with the Mediterranean Wonders virtual reality series. Developed with Ubisoft, this installation allows you to experience iconic Mediterranean cities such as Athens, Alexandria and Venice.

The Art Explora Festival - photo © Salaheddine El Bouaaichi pour Art Explora

Exhibition pavilions quayside

• The immersive Present exhibition, created as part of an exceptional collaboration with the Louvre Museum, highlights female figures in Mediterranean civilisation through the digitisation of some of the Louvre's collections. This two-stage event starts with an introductory film, which provides context for the subsequent immersive experience that takes place in a 16-metre long tunnel covered with 120 m2 of LED screens.
• The Under the azure contemporary art exhibition in the central pavilion is a collection of works by around 20 artists that takes inspiration from the evocative power of the Mediterranean Sea, the myths surrounding it, the creatures that inhabit it and the visions it conjures up. The artists featured include: Etel Adnan, Simone Fattal, Edi Hila, Marguerite Humeau, Marisa Merz, Joan Miró and Anri Sala.

  Curators: Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel and Blanche de Lestrange

• The photo pavilion houses the Undertow exhibition of photography and moving images, which focuses on relationships between hospitality, migration and exile through the work of around 15 contemporary artists from the Arab world. The artists featured include: Majd Abdel Hamid, Bouchra Khalili, Randa Maroufi, Valentin Noujaïm, Sara Sadik and Akram Zaatari.

  Curators: Amanda Abi Khalil and Danielle Makhoul

The Art Explora Festival - photo © Jean-Christophe Lett

Live program

A multidisciplinary and free programme of performances, concerts, film screenings, dance shows, workshops and discussions open to everyone.

Curated by Katerina Tselou, Greek curator

"In Piraeus — a mesh of cultures, bodies, and maritime routes — the Mediterranean emerges as a multilayered space of experience, tension, and imagination. Personal and political histories, ecological concerns, and female perspectives come together to form an explosive, polyphonic landscape, where art becomes an act of poetry and resistance.

In the port of Piraeus — a place of arrival and departure, a gateway to the islands and the southern shores — voices and gestures converge to speak of lives in motion: threatened, yet insistent and assertive." - Katerina Tselou, Greek curator

The Art Explora Festival - photo © Salaheddine El Bouaaichi pour Art Explora