We are excited to announce that the James Yale Legacy Project was selected as a 2026 CACHE Take Action grant recipient! This support and acknowledgement will help us to develop a new dimension to jamesyale.com and create a James Yale store that features wearable art and prints.
Sales from this new website addition of a James Yale store is an important step to support and perpetuate the continuation of our sleuthing as we rediscover his extensive body of art work, the stories behind that art, and the man James Yale as we build a sustainable foundation to keep growing the vision through the sales of an expanding product base. This new feature begins the fourth year of the vision for the Legacy Project.
Each year’s vision progress has made great strides in our community and outreach in having sleuths join us from across the country in finding James’ body of work. Our goal is to one day build his catalog that includes fine art, architecture, inventions in science, advertising, and writing.
In the first year of the Legacy Project we created the website as an archival repository for each week’s interviews of rediscovered art. Also in the completion of the first year, James Yale’s art was exhibited for the first time in sixteen years at The Medium in an exhibit titled Generational Journeys. James believed in a master’s apprentice symbiotic learning process of professional artists passing the craft to the next generation.
In the second year we completed over 25 recorded interviews of rediscovered art that now are archived on the Rediscovered Art section on the website.
We just completed the third year on August 25, 2026, debuting the James Yale Creative Storytelling Invitational at The Medium, as a tribute to James storytelling intent as a master of Modern Mythology. The Invitational was a call to artists across the nation to interpret the James Yale commissioned painting Rayaak in the form of a poem, spoken word essay, screenplay and Songwriting.
Below is a testament from one of the finalists, Michael Brashears:
Being a part of the James Yale storytelling Invitational, I took someone else’s beautiful piece of art and experienced it through my own memory to tell the story with my own words and music. This has been an incredible experience to be chosen as a finalist, and I am honored to share my song, The Quiet Place.
This start-up grant ensures our sustainability to be able to look to 2027 and dream even farther with the Second Annual James Yale Storytelling Invitational, and expand the short documentary For the Love of James and to a longer feature: The Lost Artist of the Ozarks.
Below is the ten minute documentary – For the Love of James
My gratitude to you all,
Charlotte Buchanan Yale- creatrix of the James Yale Legacy Project
