“…In a work of collaborative research, we have been examining the biographies of Korean shaman paintings (musindo, t' aenghwa), considering how they operate in different contexts of use, transaction, and appreciation, and how these meanings are subject to debate, even among the shamans themselves. We have explored how, in recent decades, such paintings have become objects of collectable art, avidly sought by a coterie of South Korean collectors, and have noted how these same paintings retain a frisson from their prior association with shamans, gods, and souls (Kendall and Yang 2014;Kendall, Yang, and Yoon, forthcoming). 1 They are "hybrids" in Bruno Latour's sense (1993); once regarded as sacred, magical, and possibly even scary, they have been "purified" by their translation as collectable art (Mitchell 2005), but not completely.…”