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Ave Sophia Demelemester, Director of Music Estonia, took part as a member of the President’s cultural delegation. The main event was a major exhibition dedicated to the 90th anniversary of Arvo Pärt.

On Wednesday, May 7, the exhibition “Spiegel im Spiegel: Encounters Between Estonian and German Art from Lucas Cranach to Arvo Pärt and Gerhard Richter” opened at the Lipsiusbau art hall in Dresden. It is the largest-ever display of Estonian art in Germany. The exhibition was opened by the President of the Republic of Estonia, Alar Karis, and the Minister-President of Saxony, Michael Kretschmer. A concert by the ensemble Vox Clamantis, featuring the music of Arvo Pärt, also took place in Dresden. The exhibition was organised in cooperation between the Dresden State Art Collections and the Art Museum of Estonia.

Among the contemporary artists featured in the exhibition were Kristina Norman, Jaanus Samma, and Edith Karlson, whose work “Hora Lupi”—created for the Estonian Pavilion at the 2024 Venice Art Biennale—forms a central part of the display at Lipsiusbau. For the first time outside of Estonia, the exhibition showcases manuscripts and music journals by Arvo Pärt, curated by the Arvo Pärt Centre.

The cultural delegation also visited several other art exhibitions and events, including the Semperoper, the Grünes Gewölbe (one of Europe’s largest collections of jewels and court treasures), and the youth theatre tjg. theater junge generation, where one of the directors is Estonian dramaturg Mihkel Seeder. Additionally, the delegation visited Chemnitz, which will be the European Capital of Culture in 2025, and the local art exhibition “European Realities”, which explores European realism in the 1920s and 1930s.

The delegation also attended a joint reception for both business and cultural representatives. The business side was coordinated by the Estonian Business and Innovation Agency. Companies represented in the business delegation included Insta Globe Engineering, Gofore Estonia, Praktikal Education, Proekspert, NOTE Pärnu, CGI Estonia, Net Group, Skeleton Technologies, Nortal, ADM Interactive, the German-Baltic Chamber of Commerce, and the Estonian Business and Innovation Agency.

Members of the cultural delegation included representatives from Eesti Kontsert, the Estonian Centre for Contemporary Art, the Art Museum of Estonia, the Estonian Literature Centre, the University of Tartu Library, the University of Tartu, the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, Tallinn University, the Estonian Academy of Arts, the Arvo Pärt Centre, the Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design, the gallery Art&Tonic, Music Estonia, the Tartu Art Museum, Theater Junge Generation, and the Ministry of Culture.