National Academy of Sciences of Belarus to Patron Several Major Projects

The Center for Research on Belarusian Culture, Language, and Literature of the National Academy of Sciences has embarked on a new five-year scientific period. This means that its staff, numbering over 200 individuals, have taken under their wing several significant projects.

For the Research Museum, 2026 is a commemorative year: in July, it will mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of its first director, Olga Terechstova. In the late 1960s, alongside like-minded colleagues, she organized expeditions across Belarus using her own funds to collect monuments of national culture. She led these expeditions, which succeeded in saving from destruction and gathering hundreds of artistic artifacts from the 16th to 19th centuries.

But the center’s scientific interests are not limited to this. Its staff will begin preparing documents and scientific justifications for submitting Belarusian “malyvanka” (traditional embroidered shirt) to the UNESCO list of intangible cultural heritage. This is not the first such project undertaken by the center’s specialists: last year, they successfully achieved heritage protection status for Neglyubsky weaving tradition.