Centre Pompidou Education Program Takes Center Stage at Palazzo Grassi's Grand Tour

The third edition of Grand Tour, an initiative hosted at the Teatrino di Palazzo Grassi in Venice, will run from November 24 to 27. This year's program focuses on the educational services of the Centre Pompidou, following previous editions featuring Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo and Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi. The event opens on Friday afternoon with a roundtable for professionals, moderated by Patrice Chazottes of the Centre Pompidou's Direction des publics and Alexis Sornin of Palazzo Grassi – Punta della Dogana's Education Department. Participants will discuss cultural mediation, didactics, and audience engagement. Chazottes noted that for forty years, mediation at the Centre Pompidou has centered on practice and reflection, aiming to attract diverse audiences. From November 25 to 27, the foyer becomes a sand sculpture workshop led by Canadian sculptor Dale Murdock, using four tons of sand with no thematic or age restrictions, echoing the marine themes of Damien Hirst's Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable. Free guided tours of the Hirst exhibition at Palazzo Grassi and Punta della Dogana will be offered on Saturday and Sunday, where participants aged five and up can sketch the treasures. The Grand Tour concludes on November 27 with a talk by Jean-Yves Jouannais, author of Les Barrages de sable. Traité de castellologie littorale, exploring sandcastle construction as an anthropological ritual tied to human attraction to war.