Legal Commentary II: Mexico and the Arts

Again, via the Art Law Blog, USA Today has the scoop on Mexico allowing artists to pay their income tax with works of art:

That's the deal Mexico has offered to artists since 1957, quietly amassing a modern art collection that would make most museum curators swoon. As the 2009 tax deadline approaches, tax collectors are getting ready to receive a whole new crop of masterworks.

"It's really an amazing concept," says José San Cristóbal Larrea, director of the program. "We're helping out artists while building a cultural inheritance for the country."

There's a sliding scale: If you sell five artworks in a year, you must give the government one. Sell 21 pieces, the government gets six. A 10-member jury of artists ensures that no one tries to unload junk.

(...)

Under the program, the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit now owns 4,248 paintings, sculptures, engravings and photographs by Diego Rivera, Rufino Tamayo, Leonora Carrington and other masters.

Incredible. Basically, the government of Mexico is saying "we value the arts enough to accept it as legal tender." That's what I call putting your money where your mouth is!

"There's no censorship here," says Julieta Ruiz, a curator at the museum.

If anything, the temptation to needle the taxman makes the art even edgier, she says.

Rafael Coronel's 1980 tax payment is a portrait called He Who Doesn't Pay Taxes. A painting that Fabian Ugalde contributed in 2002 declares in huge letters, "The authorities have still not determined whether it was an act of aggression or just another piece of art."

A 10-foot-high drawing by Demián Flores shows a man sexually assaulted by a rattlesnake, an apparent reference to the Mexican government because the rattlesnake appears on the Mexican flag.

The Mexican Government proves that if you have a sense of humor about yourselves, you can get along with artists much better. After all, if the Mexican government is unfazed by Coronel, Ugalde, or Flores' poking at their faces, the works lose all of their teeth instantly. If Mexico can smile and say "well at least they're paying their taxes," what are they going to do about it?

At any rate, I would like to pay my taxes in the form of a one-man show at the Kennedy Center, curated by Rocco Landesman. Any takers?

My Mind 4/17 - 4/23

How I was keeping my mind clean this week:

• Imagining playing with toy cars.
• Feeling guilty about how funny I find news of a priest falling asleep during a suicide hotline call. Spoiler alert: nobody dies.
• Scummy celebrities versus their critics: Baio v. Jezebel and LaBute v. Chicago.

How I was keeping my mind fit this week:

• Wondering with Matt Freeman about raising children in the arts. If the 93% Childless rate amongst NY's Independent Theater as collected by the New York Innovative Theatre Foundation is any indication, the question is not being answered.
• Weighing Tycho of Penny Arcade's response to Roger Ebert saying that video games aren't art. Shorter Tycho: Don't waste your time, Ebert can't take anything away from you.

Important facts:

• A handy chart of where your tax dollars go: 20% to defense, 20% to Social Security, 14% to the safety net, 6% to debt, and then other smaller things. If those are the accurate numbers... it actually seems to me to be about right.
• Another handy chart of sleep schedules. Bottom line: your 20s are an aberration, sleep-wise.
• As polls go, Rasmussen leans furthest to the right, and not for easily-explainable reasons.
• There are 1.1 Million virgins between the ages of 25 and 40. I'm finally part of a minority!
• Voting Yes on Health Care was a big fundraising bump if you were a Democrat. If you were a Republican? Well, we'll never know.
• California's state constitution is the third oldest in the world, after Alabama and India. All three fail to provide political stability or equal access to public services.
• The Double Down is not as bad as many of its fast-food contemporaries. Thanks again, Nate Silver!

Things to watch in the future:

• Will Nick Clegg win -- or at least, break through?
• Will Harry Reid win his financial regulation game of chicken?
• Will Governor Charlie Crist run as an independent?
• Will AIG get in on the action and sue Goldman Sachs?
• Will Viacom back down on censoring South Park?

Non-Profit Recession News 1: Donations

Via Andrew Sullivan:

I work for a small, 5-year old non-profit arts organization in Illinois. A couple of our usual big donors have indicated we should be prepared for smaller donations this year, and possibly none in the next couple of years. The are mentioning Obama's tax plans and their need to save money now in anticipation of that. A lot of my colleagues in the not-for-profit world are really scared right now, and we are not happy with Obama. We hear the rhetoric that the government is going to have a reserve to give to non-profits that will make up for some of the lost donations, but the fact is, we have never received federal aid, and likely never would (assuming the organization could even make it that far). Organizations are going to be killed under Obama's plan. I may have voted myself out of a job, and voted a whole community of kids out of art-making opportunities. Frankly, this sucks.

My response (directed to Andrew Sullivan):

I sympathize with your reader who feels that non-profits are going to suffer under Obama's tax plan. One would assume that higher taxes might make people more inclined to find a non-profit to donate to (wasn't that the whole model that non-profit tax deduction is based around?). I myself am just starting a non-profit theater, and the atmosphere here in New York City is one of fear. Foundations will be awarding less, donors will be giving less, large corporate sponsors may be backing out of the charitable world(Washington Mutual in Seattle, other big fish in New York City). But on the other hand, this is only a part of Obama's potential to effect us. After all, if his universal health care plan goes over, then the cost of doing business for non-profits will shift, to a large degree, to the Government. And that money will be coming from the rich--our potential donors, and those who potentially wouldn't donate. The artists who work for us won't have to worry about health care--that does a lot for their long term security working the field.

Obama also gives us the opportunity to change our fundraising models. Rather than plying wealthy donors to give large chunks of money, perhaps we can raise a lot more small donations. In New York City, the Lung Cancer Foundation launched a campaign called "You Are One In A Million." They want 1 million people to give $20, rather than the old fundraising model that looks more like twenty people giving $1 million. Like Obama's, getting smaller donations from more people ensures that we're relying on community outreach rather than wealthy connection to be moving forward; and that's both closer to our missions as non-profits, and more sustainable for the future.

I still think we're going to come out on top from Obama's intervention.

Burning Question of the Day

Is there ANYONE who pays their taxes correctly?

Seriously, can we do a study and see how many people in this country have unpaid or incorrectly filed taxes? How can it be that FOUR of Obama's nominees have tax problems? What the hell is this! Geithner, Daschle, that person from OPM, and Solis (well, her husband)? Come on people!

Then again, taxes are complicated as all hill-el. It's these darn TurboTax people.