The Work Was Never Lost.
It Was Waiting
To Be Found.
Why Give?You Help Preserve What Could Be Lost
Your donation helps us step in where time, circumstance, or the death of a maker has left important work without a clear future. We preserve the art, objects, stories, spaces, and records that might otherwise disappear.
You Help Protect Dell Kinyon Taylor’s Home and Work
Our first preservation effort begins here. Dell’s home and the thousands of things he made require immediate care—from the structure itself to the documentation, stabilization, and preservation of the work inside it. Your support helps us protect both as we prepare them for the future.
You Help Us Find What Has Been Overlooked
Dell’s story is not the only one. There are makers whose life’s work remains in homes, studios, garages, basements, and estates with nowhere to go when they are gone. The Lost and Found Arts Foundation exists to find that work, understand it, preserve what matters, and create opportunities for it to be seen.
You Become Part of What Happens Next
Giving to the Lost and Found Arts Foundation is not simply about saving what already exists. It helps create a future for work that might otherwise end with the person who made it—through preservation, documentation, exhibitions, education, and eventually the passing of knowledge from one generation of makers to another.
What we save today becomes something others will have the chance to discover tomorrow.
Our Positive ImpactThe Great Kinyon Project is the first of what we hope will become many.
The Lost and Found Arts Foundation was created to protect the things—and the knowledge—that can disappear when a maker is gone. We work with artists, makers, families, and estates to identify important bodies of work, document and preserve what remains, and create opportunities for work that might otherwise be scattered, discarded, or forgotten to continue being seen.
But preservation cannot begin only after someone dies.
A central part of our mission is bringing generations together. We are working toward programs that connect emerging makers with aging artists and craftspeople, creating opportunities to learn directly from them—their techniques, processes, stories, and ways of understanding materials that cannot always be captured in a book or archive. Knowledge passed from one pair of hands to another becomes its own form of preservation.
The Great Kinyon is where this work begins. What we learn here will help us build a model that can reach far beyond one house, one maker, or one lifetime.
Preserve the work. Pass on the knowledge. Give what was almost lost an opportunity to be found.
Join us and give for
endless potential
to help other’s
in
Make a donation
Frequently Asked Questions-
The Lost and Found Arts Foundation is a nonprofit corporation organized in Utah and is pursuing federal recognition as a 501(c)(3) charitable organization. Until that process is complete, we do not represent donations as federally tax-deductible. Once our tax-exempt status is recognized, we will update this information accordingly.
If you are making a significant contribution, we encourage you to speak with your tax professional about your individual circumstances.
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Donations directly support the preservation work of the Lost and Found Arts Foundation.
Our first major responsibility is the preservation of Dell Kinyon Taylor’s home, work, and archive. Funds help address the immediate needs of the house, protect and document the thousands of works and objects within it, improve environmental conditions, prepare work for exhibition, and build the archival record necessary for its long-term care.
As the Foundation grows, donations will also allow us to help other artists, makers, families, and estates facing the same question: what happens to a lifetime of work when there is no clear place for it to go?
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Yes. There is an enormous amount of work ahead, and not all of it requires a financial contribution.
We welcome people who can contribute their time, professional knowledge, skills, materials, equipment, connections, or simply a willingness to help. Preservation, documentation, construction, research, exhibitions, events, photography, archival work, transportation, and many other areas will require people who care about what we are trying to do.
If you believe you have something to contribute, please contact us and tell us a little about yourself and how you would like to be involved.
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Yes, when they meet an actual need of the Foundation.
Materials, professional services, equipment, archival supplies, construction assistance, transportation, storage, printing, technology, and other goods or services may be extremely valuable to our work. Because our needs change as projects develop, please contact us before making an in-kind contribution so we can determine whether it can be put to use.
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For certain projects, yes. When the Foundation establishes a specific preservation project or fundraising effort, you may have the opportunity to direct your contribution toward that work.
Unrestricted donations give us the greatest flexibility to respond to the most immediate preservation needs as they arise.
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Potentially. One of the long-term purposes of the Lost and Found Arts Foundation is to help address what happens when an artist or maker leaves behind a body of work without a clear future.
That does not mean we can accept everything. Each situation has to be considered individually based on the work, its history, its condition, available space and resources, and whether the Foundation is capable of caring for it responsibly.
If you are an artist, family member, executor, trustee, or representative of an estate and believe there is a body of work we should know about, please contact us before moving, dividing, selling, discarding, or donating anything.
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Yes. Businesses, organizations, tradespeople, manufacturers, and professionals can support the Foundation through financial contributions, materials, services, equipment, sponsorship of specific preservation efforts, or other forms of assistance.
We are especially interested in relationships with people and organizations that understand the value of preserving something properly rather than simply making it disappear.
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Yes. The Foundation can provide an acknowledgment of contributions received. The acknowledgment will identify the Foundation and the amount of a monetary contribution or, where appropriate, describe a non-cash contribution without assigning a value to it.
Donors are responsible for determining the value of non-cash contributions and should consult their own tax professional when necessary.
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The Lost and Found Arts Foundation is a Utah nonprofit corporation led by William Pruitt, custodian of The Great Kinyon, Caleb O’Brien, and Clementine Rane.
The foundation grew from something deeply personal. All three of us were with Dell Kinyon Taylor during the final years of his life. We learned from him, worked beside him, listened to his stories, and gradually came to understand not only the enormity of what he had created, but how easily a lifetime of making could disappear when the person behind it was gone.
After Dell’s death, that realization became a responsibility. His home, his work, his stories, and the knowledge contained within them needed someone willing to stay, learn, document, protect, and carry them forward. In doing that work, we discovered that Dell’s situation was not unique.
There are makers everywhere whose lives do not fit neatly within museums, galleries, or established institutions. When they die, families and friends can be left with decades of work and no clear place for it to go. Along with the objects themselves, techniques, stories, relationships, and knowledge can disappear within a generation.
The preservation of Dell Kinyon Taylor’s home and body of work is where our work begins, but it is not where it ends. Lost and Found Arts Foundation exists to create a future for the things—and the lives behind them—that might otherwise be lost.