While the Museum of the Lost and Found has an abundance of beautiful, thought-provoking pieces best viewed over multiple visits, we understand that your visit today must be brief. We have therefore created a personalized guide for your visit, based on the hesitance of your touch on the door and the waver in your smile. Please visit these works in order and take your preferred exit when you’re ready.

 

Lamentations, Tech Billionaire Gallery of Modern Art (anonymous)

In this series of short videos, a prominent Australian actress repeats a rhythmic mourning ritual in various languages. The videos are synced such that what she remembers and honors is muffled by the repetition and overlap of other videos. Some visitors get lost in the repetition and cease listening for meaning. Others find the missing information overwhelming. What is it you miss most?

 

Opal Monochrome, Tech Billionaire Gallery of Modern Art (Saint Silver-Perez)

This single-tone shimmering canvas was lost after a flood destroyed Silver-Perez’s Mexico City studio in 2014. It appeared at the museum a decade later. The faint barbed-wire pattern is only visible from certain angles, suggesting a barrier only dimly understood by the viewer. Experts on Silver-Perez’s work theorize that the water in and on this canvas in the decade of its disappearance contribute to the unusually shiny, reflective quality of the paint. If you squint your eyes and lose focus, the shine of it looks like tears, doesn’t it? It looks like regret.

 

Field of Flowers, Grounding Gallery (Celine Noordman)

The vivid blues and purples of the flowers in this detailed painting seem to burst out of the canvas. The intensity of the colors has led some visitors to describe it as an “elementary school painting,” but its brightness is also its strength. The field, the hills, and the buildings in the distance all suggest childhood, nostalgia, the sweaty grip of your best friend’s hand. The world was only ever this bright when it was his palm next to yours.

 

Statue of the Outstretched Hand, Hall of Confusion (artist unknown)

The sheer size of this onyx statue, which appeared in the museum’s ground-floor sculpture hall in 1972, can be overwhelming. Make sure to stay behind the rope barrier, as a few visitors have found themselves drawn to the sharp edges of the fingernails. For some, the understanding and the memory is too much. Do you think that what you did is so terrible that only pain can bring back what it cost you?

 

Break

It is recommended that you take a quick break in the museum’s cafe at this point in the tour. Please respect each patron’s individual journey through the museum and do not try to engage anyone in conversation about loss or regret.

You don’t know how to ask for what you want back?

Keep going.

 

Second Sunset on the Serpentine, Gallery of Deep Impressions (Samantha Graves Mournier)

One of the earliest pieces donated to the museum, this painting was sent to the museum during the ten-month period in 1811 when Mournier was believed missing. The painting has stirred interest over the years due to the presence of two setting suns on opposite sides of the canvas, with intense and impossible colors appearing where the rays from both suns meet. It is only in their apparent battle that the suns appear to best effect. Have you ever felt that you could only access the best parts of yourself in the presence of someone or something else? Did that make you feel powerful or weak?

 

Beaded Flames, Outskirts of the Flammable Construct Gallery (forebears of the museum)

Beaded flames encircle the entirety of the Flammable Construct Gallery. They lap at your ankles, just hot enough not to feel. This is one of the few pieces in the museum with a component for visitors to touch: put your hand to the blue lighter in the southwest corner of the gallery. You can flick it on if you want. You can ignite everything at a touch, just like you did once before. Your betrayal burned bright, then, your words the match and the kindling. Do you think it will feel the same? The rush of power fades, but ashes last.

 

Dress for a Hollow Queen, Flammable Construct Gallery (Cooper County Costuming Collective)

This piece, made primarily of feathers, discarded silk, and tightly woven straw, is the tallest sculpture in the museum. The red and orange skirt flares out from a bodice that spirals in a nearly uniform cylinder up to its peak only ten feet from the ceiling of the gallery. Dress for a Hollow Queen brought attention to the museum when a visitor to the Flammable Construct Gallery burned it to ash. By night, the Cooper County Costuming Collective rebuilt the entire sculpture from scratch. Does this change how you look at the sculpture? Some kinds of destruction require complete rebirth; some artists are willing to do that work. Ask yourself: Are you one of them?

 

Writing Fountain, Hall of the Phoenix (anonymous)

Of course it’s not that easy, but go ahead and sit at the desk at the edge of the fountain anyway. There’s room enough for you, and you have a little time. You can’t wish things undone, in this world, but that doesn’t mean there’s no way to make this easier. The way the water moves, sometimes the words seem to write themselves. Put the pen to the paper and see what comes out. If you’re really sorry, most of the words are already there.

It’s okay not to know how to repair something when you start out. You have to do it anyway.

 

Please take your paper with you when you leave. There is a recycling bin on the right and a mailbox on the left. We know where to reach him, if you think you’ve found what you need to say.

© 2025 AnaMaria Curtis