Art & Science par 4 chemins" educational trail

Depuis sa création, le parcours « Art et Science par 4 Chemins » invite les élèves de CM1 et CM2, des communes de Montpellier Métropole, à explorer différentes thématiques sous toutes ses facettes, en croisant art et science, au sein d’établissements culturels de la Métropole et de la Ville de Montpellier. L’édition 2026-2027 réunit :

• L’Écolothèque, 
• Le site archéologique Lattara – musée Henri Prades, 
• Le musée Fabre, 
• Planet Ocean Montpellier, 
• Le MO.CO. Montpellier Contemporain,
• Micro-Folie (Espace Gisèle Halimi).

Everything is color, and nature is the best example of this. When they come to the Ecolothèque, classes benefit from one or two of the three activities offered by the Resource Center. Depending on the date of their visit, pupils can, for example, take part in the "en voir de toutes les couleurs" (see all the colors) trail, and as they go along, discover why animals, plants and even the sky, sometimes take on extraordinary hues.

At other times, we offer the class two simultaneous workshops:

• "Light on color" looks at the physical origin of color, its mysteries, how we or other animals perceive it.
• "Dye your fabric!" puts into practice the use of natural dyes and let's set off to meet dye plants. Whatever the theme, each intervention is made up of experiments and concrete, sometimes surprising, discoveries.

In ancient times, the port of Lattara was a crossroads of civilizations, where different peoples mingled: Etruscans, Greeks, Iberians, Romans and local Gallic populations. Each with their own know-how, they were able to offer the city a wealth of riches that archaeologists have been unearthing since the site was discovered in 1963.

Such as the mosaics, painted plasterwork, blown glass and decorated vases that have been unearthed shed light on millennia-old techniques. For these creations, ancient craftsmen and artists knew how to use oxides and minerals giving rich colors to these objects.

Together, we'll discover their manufacturing secrets, and how they evolved over the centuries from their creation to their discovery. In this way, we'll see that color, in addition to being decorative, can also be an important clue in archaeological science, particularly with the oxidation of metals.

The sky offers us an infinite number of colors, but the main one we enjoy on Earth is the white light of the sun. To understand the workings and life of the sun is to decipher the mechanisms at the heart of the stars that enable them to produce this heat and light.

White light in the case of the sun is actually made up of all the colors of the rainbow. This variety of color is found in the stars, but it has a very different meaning from the panoply of colors offered to us by celestial phenomena observable from Earth or the objects of the cosmos themselves.

In addition to observing the spectacle of the sky from Earth, this planetarium session will also be an opportunity to explore the solar system, from the telluric planets to the farthest reaches of the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud, to discover a multitude of worlds as varied as the colors that make them up...

The tanks at Planet Ocean are home to more than 300 species in a variety of different, complex colors and patterns. While the colors of coral lagoon fish or freshwater rays delight our human eyes, they're not there for ornamental reasons alone.

How do aquatic animals perceive colors? Do these colors have a meaning? Why are some striped, others silvery or mottled? Can they change color in the course of their lives?

These questions will first be tackled in the classroom, so that pupils can discover the secrets of color vision, before setting off on a "photo rally" at certain stops along the tour route, to meet these species.

Museum artworks, whether figurative or abstract, employ numerous colors, whose combinations allow for infinite variations.

Colors come from pigments, first developed from natural elements (pigments of plant, mineral or animal origin) and later, from the 19th century onwards, from chemical components. The many experiments carried out by painters throughout history have led to results that are sometimes spectacular, challenging our sense of observation and the way our eye sees.

The museum tour, tailor-made for the occasion, will use specific examples to present these different sides of color.

Color has always occupied a central place in art. What is the range of possibilities available to contemporary artists in their approach to color? How do we, as visitors, perceive them?What emotions and symbolism do we associate with artworks through color?

Here's an overview of the questions that will be addressed during this tour. After careful observation of the works using a variety of tools, students will be invited to take part in a visual arts workshop. Using the colors studied during the visit, different instructions will be given: paint a hue from memory or from a statement. The class will leave with a collective color chart.

De l’utilisation de la couleur comme moyen de retranscrire les objets du réel à l’expression subjective des émotions, nous allons plonger dans les teintes des œuvres pour un voyage à travers les arts. Les couleurs sont affaires de perceptions qui dépendent des sensations individuelles, des constructions sociales, des contextes dans lesquelles elles sont vues… Elles sont aussi l’expression de l’artiste qui les utilisent pour transmettre des émotions.

Que se passe-t-il quand la couleur prend le pas sur la forme ? L’art moderne rompt avec le réel et fait de la couleur le personnage principal. Tant de courants qui cherchent à s’émanciper des règles classiques héritées de la Renaissance en réinventant la forme, la couleur, les perspectives pour laisser la pleine place aux émotions.