University of Dayton artist-designer and endowed chair Suki Kwon has conducted research in Tokyo, served as a visiting scholar in China, and in recent years, participated in an international artist residency in India and led community-based art projects in India and Nepal.
Now, Kwon’s passion for interdisciplinary studies and cultural exploration will take her to Bhutan, a Buddhist kingdom on the Himalayas’ eastern edge, where she will teach and research during the 2026-27 academic year through a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program award from the U.S. Department of State and Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.
“This is a wonderful achievement for Suki and highlights a career of design research and production that is international in scope, collaborative and transdisciplinary,” said Joel Whitaker, professor and chair of the UD Department of Art and Design. “The department can point to Suki as a faculty member who doesn’t just study the world — they want to actively engage with it.”
Kwon’s project, “Art for Connection: Interdisciplinary Teaching and Community Practice in Bhutan,” will explore the role of art and design in society through classroom teaching and community engagement, with the goal of helping students recognize the value of connecting their creative work with communities.
The project aligns with Bhutan’s Sherig education reforms under the Royal University of Bhutan, which emphasizes experiential, values-based learning in line with the country’s “Gross Natural Happiness” philosophy, which places culture and ecology at the center of development.
“That’s one of the reasons I was attracted to Bhutan,” said Kwon, a professor in the UD Department of Art and Design and the Graul Endowed Chair in Arts and Languages. “Scandinavian countries are known for their emphasis and research on the importance of happiness — they are known as the happiest countries in the world according to the annual World Happiness Report.
“But in the 1970s, before this global focus on ‘happiness,’ Bhutan introduced the idea of Gross National Happiness as measuring the country’s success by the people’s happiness. They reject measuring the nation’s success by income or economic growth; they propose to evaluate it by how happy its people are.”
Kwon also was attracted to Bhutan because of its convergence of South and East Asian influences, its rich artistic and spiritual traditions, and its resilience in the face of external pressure from neighboring China and India.
“As someone of Korean origin, I recognize in Bhutan a familiar story: a small nation navigating powerful neighbors with creativity, integrity and cultural pride,” she said.
Kwon will draw on her two decades of designing interdisciplinary courses in the visual arts and humanities at UD to develop new curricula that integrate Bhutanese cultural traditions, visual heritage and community engagement.
In the classroom, she will design assignments that invite students to bring their own cultural knowledge, symbols and stories into their work.
“What they value in education aligns a lot with what I’ve been doing the last few decades at UD. When I read the Fulbright Scholar description for Bhutan, I felt like, ‘Hmm, they are looking for me,’” she said with a laugh.
Her experience as a participant in the 2023 Art for Change international artist residency in India and the 2018 Matter + Spirit: A Chinese/American seminar in China that culminated in a two-year touring exhibition across the U.S., as well as her recent work with Indian and Nepali village collaborators, fit with Bhutan’s desire for a researcher interested in community engagement.
In addition, her work since 2023 as Graul Chair has included supporting UD faculty who are developing interdisciplinary research and sponsoring programming that increases the visibility of global arts and culture on campus.
Kwon said the Fulbright in Bhutan provides a welcome opportunity to situate community-based artmaking within a cultural and educational context where collaboration, spirituality and sustainability are deeply valued.
“I am ready for a new context — one that encourages me to rethink familiar frameworks and engage in reciprocal learning with people whose cultural values and worldviews differ from my own,” she said. “Fulbright will not only reinvigorate my creative practice but also strengthen my commitment to global, community-rooted engagement and my ability to mentor the next generation of students and emerging faculty with broader insight and purpose. This is the right opportunity at the right time to shape the next chapter of my career.”
