Dear friends!
The trustees of the Francis Skaryna Belarusian Library and Museum wish you a joyful Christmas season and a Happy New Year!
2025 was another successful, fruitful, and fulfilling year for our Library. The reconstruction and expansion of our museum space are now in their final stages. Beautifully customised display cabinets have been installed in the newly constructed room, which will house a permanent exhibition dedicated to the history and culture of Belarus. We look forward to welcoming you to the new museum in the coming year.
We expanded our collections with rare books, archival donations, and ethnographic artefacts, and continued vital work in cataloguing, digitisation, and preservation. Very welcome news arrived on Christmas Eve from Halina Kazimirouskaja, who completed two years of painstaking work cataloguing our archive of the Belarusian composer Mikoła Kulikovič, which will make his legacy accessible to Belarusians and audiences worldwide.
Our cultural programme flourished with lectures, folk festivals, and community events, making the Library a vibrant centre of Belarusian culture and a true community hub. We were proud to host the Vir folk group, which continues to go from strength to strength under the leadership of Evelina Ščadryna.
The Library strengthened its international partnerships, signing cooperation agreements with the European Humanities University (Vilnius) and continuing collaboration with institutions in Britain, Poland, and beyond. We co-organised the major annual conference Belarusian Studies in the 21st Century, presented our collections at international conferences and at the literary festival Pradmova, and welcomed researchers from leading European universities. Journalists, diplomats, and cultural figures also visited the Library during the year.
Based on the proceedings of the conference organized by the Library in 2023, a collection of articles, Novym imknieńniam dać novyja formy: Vacłaŭ Łastoŭski i kulturny dyskurs 1920-ch hadoŭ, was published in collaboration with Skaryna Press.
Throughout 2025, we received invaluable help from volunteers, as well as financial, practical, and moral support from numerous friends and well-wishers, for which we are deeply grateful. Since its inception, the Library has always been a community effort, supported by Belarusians and friends of Belarus from around the world.
As we approach our 55th anniversary and prepare to mark the centenary of one of the Library’s founders and its long-standing director, Father Alexander Nadson, in 2026, we thank all our friends and supporters and look forward to another year of shared work and celebration of Belarusian culture and identity.