KU News Release

LAWRENCE — The University of Kansas will host an event next week to benefit a school in China for Tibetans that helps them preserve their culture.

The benefit will take place from 5:30 to 9 p.m. Monday, Nov. 23, at the Art and Design Gallery in the Art and Design Building. It is free and open to the public.

The Mayul Tibetan School in Qinghai, China, was founded in 2008 to preserve local Tibetan culture and help diversify the local economy.

Yoonmi Nam, associate professor of art; Eric Rath, associate professor of history; Sooa Im, graduate student in art history; Evan McCormick, graduate student in education; Champa Tenzin Lhunpo, lecturer in East Asian languages and cultures; and Eric Conrad, assistant professor of art at Emporia State University, earned a grant from the U.S. State Department to work with staff of the Mayul school to survey traditional Tibetan arts and crafts. Their goal is to better promote and preserve the rich cultural history of the Golok region and to advise and assist the school staff in developing a modern educational curriculum, particularly in the traditional arts.

At the benefit, attendees will be able to purchase T-shirts for $20 featuring Tibetan calligraphy drawn by Lhunpo. Photos taken by members of the Golok study group also will be for sale ($20 framed, $10 unframed). The proceeds will go to the school.

A lecture by Rath, titled “Building a School for Tibetans at 13,000 Feet,” will begin at 7 p.m.

“The exhibition and talk offer a chance for people to learn more about Tibetan culture and to support KU’s cooperation with a Tibetan charity building a school in a very remote Tibetan region of China to help the local nomadic population,” said Rath.

The Golok study group visited the school this past summer and will return again in 2010. In turn, five students from Mayul Tibetan School will study at KU in the spring.

To read a blog by the KU faculty involved in the study group, go to http://mayulschool.wordpress.com/.