Dr. Laurel Kendall, Chair of the Division of Anthropology and Curator of Asian Ethnographic Collections at the American Museum of Natural History, Adjunct Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University, and president–elect of the Association for Asian Studies, explores the divine nature of Korean shaman paintings in her new book, God Pictures in Korean Contexts: The Ownership and Meaning of Shaman Paintings, co-authored by Jongsung Yang, Director of the Museum of Shamanism in Seoul, and Yul Soo Yoon, Founder and Director of the Gahoe Museum.
What makes a shaman painting sacred? Can these art pieces ever be anything but magical? Dr. Laurel Kendall navigates the journey of shaman paintings as they pass hands from painters to shamans to art collectors. Join us to examine the boundary between the art world and tangible aspects of religious practice.
Art & Magic: Shaman Paintings of Korea
with
Dr. Laurel Kendall
Chair of the Division of Anthropology and Curator of Asian Ethnographic Collections
American Museum of Natural History
Explorer & above: Free with registration
Members: $10
Nonmembers: $20
Members with Book: $20*
Nonmembers with Book: $30*
(*ticket price includes one copy of the book God Pictures in Korean Contexts: The Ownership and Meaning of Shaman Paintings)
Copies of the paperback will also be sold separately at the event for $20.
If you have any questions, please contact Luz Lanzot or (212) 759-7525, ext. 309.
About the Speaker
A scholar of popular religion and its material manifestations in East and Southeast Asia, Dr. Kendall began her long acquaintance with South Korean life in 1970 as a U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer, when a chance encounter with female shamans led her to subsequent anthropological fieldwork. Her Shamans, Nostalgias, and the IMF: South Korean Popular Religion in Motion (University of Hawaii Press, 2009) offers a 30-year perspective on people described in Shamans, Housewives, and other Restless Spirits: Women in Korean Ritual Life (1985) and The Life and Hard Times of a Korean Shaman (1988). In 2010, Korean colleagues awarded Shamans, Nostalgias, and the IMF the first Yim Suk Jay Prize recognizing a work of anthropology about Korea by a non-Korean. In 2007 the International Society for Shamanic research gave Dr. Kendall a lifetime achievement award.
Dr. Kendall’s recent work concerns the production and consumption of sacred objects in contemporary market economies, with fieldwork in South Korea, Vietnam, Myanmar, and Bali. A special edition of Asian Ethnology (Volume 63-2, 2008) on this subject, guest-edited by Kendall, brings together the work of a joint research project with the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology. Kendall has also written on gender, tradition and modernity, most notably in Getting Married in Korea (1996) and as the editor of Under Construction: The Gendering of Modernity, Class, and Consumption in the Republic of Korea (2002) and Consuming Korean Tradition in Early and Late Modernity: Commodification, Tourism, and Performance (2011).
At the American Museum of Natural History, Kendall has curated several exhibitions, including Mythic Creatures: Dragons, Unicorns, and Mermaids (2007) and Vietnam: Journeys of Body, Mind, and Spirit (2003), a unique collaboration with the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology that earned Kendall a Friendship Medal from the Government of Vietnam. Kendall recently completed a five-year term as editor of a monograph series on the "Contemporary Anthropology of Religion" sponsored by the Society for the Anthropology of Religion, American Anthropological Association, and was President of the Society for East Asian Anthropology, AAA.
