From 12 to 20 September 2025, the festival and its unique museum boat will dock at Karolina Riječka Pier in the Port of Rijeka for the very first time.
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 the Art Explora Festival is now setting its course for Croatia.
From 12 to 20 September 2025, the festival and its unique museum boat will dock at Karolina Riječka Pier in the Port of Rijeka for the very first time. The live programme is curated by Branka Benčić, Croatian curator and Director of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rijeka.
“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 Chairman
Programme for the Art Explora Festival in Rijeka from 12 to 20 September 2025
In Rijeka, the festival will take place on board the museum boat, quayside with a stage and a workshop space, and in a range of venues in the host cities, such as the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art and the City Museum of Rijeka.
Immersive experiences on board the museum boat
On the upper deck: An immersive audio experience centered around the richness and diversity of the Mediterranean, designed and produced by IRCAM (the French Institute for Research and Coordination 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 live program curated by Branka Benčić, Croatian curator and Director of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rijeka.
A multidisciplinary and free programme of performances, concerts, screenings, dance, talks and workshops will be opened to everyone.
‘’With the title Behind the tide, the concept of the Art Explora Festival stopover in Rijeka will inspire our connection to the sea, and bring forward cross-Mediterranean cultural influences intertwined in the plethora of identities that trigger our imagination, responsibility and awareness.
Behind the tide brings together a multilayered program of discourse, screenings, workshops, performance and music dedicated to the sea and resonating with the local context, it’s environment, stories, histories and future perspectives. Immersive sound and images, will engage with perspectives of emancipatory female voices, fragments of mythology and heritage of antiquity, issues of modernization and demodernization, archival documentary film heritage, the transnational perspectives and sounds and echos of marine life and aquatic ecosystems, to highlight potential turning points in the reconceptualization of the relationship with the sea.
The program will navigate between geophysical, historical and imaginative narratives. It will reveal a network of relationships, discovering old and new horizons. The sea brings forward complex and contradictory feelings, feelings of belonging and connectedness with the world, while at the same time it is about the distance and the unknown. Artists look at many ways, at the realities, histories and the sensory experiences that orient the collective reimagination.’’ Branka Benčić, art historian and curator of the Croatian stopover of the Art Explora Festival
Branka Benčić is an art historian and curator based in Croatia. She is the director of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rijeka.
SAVE THE DATE
FRIDAY 12 SEPTEMBER – Afternoon Inauguration of the Art Explora Festival
Karolina Riječka Pier Port of Rijeka
Accor
As one of the Art Explora Festival’s main partners, the Accor Group played a key role in its inaugural success. This partnership, formalised in Marseille, reflects Accor’s commitment to sharing the arts with as many people as possible. Sensitive to the challenges faced by Art Explora, Accor, together with its employees, its ALL – Accor Live Limitless loyalty programme and its hotels, is ready and waiting to support the festival in every country along the way. The partnership draws on the Accor Group’s ALL -Accor Live Limitless reservation platform and loyalty programme to offer exclusive experiences for its members at the festival
About Art Explora Festival
The Art Explora Festival is a touring festival that travels across seas and oceans on its museum boat, offering free access to innovative artistic and cultural experiences.
The festival is hosted aboard the world’s very first museum boat, quayside in exhibition pavilions, and in various locations within its host cities, with a programme that combines exhibitions, virtual reality, performances, conventions, film screenings, concerts and more.
From Spring 2024 until Autumn 2027, the museum boat will travel to 15 countries in the Mediterranean; the cradle of great civilisations and a melting pot of many cultures. It will bring together artists, curators and cultural, educational and community organisations to collectively imagine a new vision of the Mediterranean.
www.artexplora.org/festival
@artexplorafestival
About Art Explora
Art Explora is an international organisation that inspires new encounters between arts and audiences – locally, nationally and internationally. Its imaginative contemporary approach encourages new forms of access participation and engagement with arts and culture, pushing boundaries with digital technology and mobile programmes. It works in partnership with artists, cultural organisations and communities, exploring all art forms and creating transformative cultural experiences for everyone. Art Explora is a charitable organisation founded in 2019 by philanthropist and entrepreneur Frédéric Jousset, with offices in France and the UK, bringing together many partners and over 2,000 volunteers.