Fondation Art Explora is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting art and culture through education and accessibility. Founded in France in 2019 by Frédéric Jousset, it aims to reduce the cultural divide and democratize access to art and cultural heritage, particularly for younger generations and underserved communities.
Guided by the conviction that art improves well-being, Art Explora develops international, mobile, and digital initiatives that challenge traditional models of art presentation. By bringing artists, artworks, and audiences together in new contexts, from hospitals to rural towns to ports across the Mediterranean, the foundation reimagines how art can be encountered, shared, and experienced worldwide.
Fondation Art Explora leads diverse initiatives to promote art and culture worldwide, combining artistic creation, innovation, and social impact to reach audiences beyond traditional cultural spaces.
Art Explora is also behind the Art Explora Festival, a large-scale, free, traveling cultural festival built around the world’s first museum boat. Since its launch in 2024, the festival has traveled to multiple Mediterranean ports, featuring more than 800 artists and welcoming over 300,000 visitors aboard a custom-built catamaran and across host cities’ waterfronts.
The festival brings together exhibitions, immersive installations, performances, concerts, talks, and educational programming, developed in close collaboration with local cultural institutions and artists. Through this model, the festival fosters international dialogue and cultural exchange.
In partnership with the organization It Is Now, Art Explora leads an innovative program that installs interactive digital artworks in children’s hospitals and care institutions serving children with disabilities.
Through collaborations with contemporary digital artists, this program creates immersive and inclusive artworks designed to spark curiosity, creativity, and play, regardless of a child’s physical or cognitive abilities. A flagship example is Reflections by artist Danny Rose, installed at the center of the atrium of the Imagine Institute at Necker Hospital in Paris. This installation reaches more than 30,000 children each year and transforms a medical environment into a space of wonder, imagination, and emotional relief.
By integrating art into healthcare settings, these installations contribute positively to children’s well-being and offer moments of joy, agency, and connection that complement medical care. The program continues to grow, with the ambition of installing 25 interactive artworks in hospitals by 2027.
Each year, the foundation supports emerging artists through the Montmartre Artist Residency Program in Paris. The program welcomes 20 artists annually and offers them time, space, and visibility within one of France’s most historically significant artistic neighborhoods, fostering artistic research, experimentation, and creative exchange.
Alongside these flagship initiatives, Art Explora advances cultural access on land through its mobile museums and cinema projects. These initiatives bring high-quality exhibitions and film programming directly to rural areas, small towns, and priority urban neighborhoods, often reaching audiences who have never visited a museum or cultural venue before.
With the help of Friends of Fondation de France, U.S donors can support exciting projects:
Learn more through our blog article published on August 7, 2023 and February 27, 2026.
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