Back in 1979, the Maine state legislature passed a pair of landmark art bills that the Union of Maine Visual Artists was instrumental in proposing.
“An Act to Encourage the Maine State Museum Commission to Acquire Works of Art Beneficial to the State” was the vaguely worded title of what became known as Maine’s Artist’s Estate Tax Law, the law that permitted payment of state inheritance taxes with works of art.
An Act to Provide for Art in Public Buildings and Other Facilities became better known as Maine’s Percent for Art program “in which 1 percent of the moneys appropriated for construction or major renovation of certain public buildings and other facilities is required to be expended for works of art for that building or facility.”
The estate tax law, which was largely inspired by the financial problems of the estate of sculptor Bernard “Blackie” Langlais, has become largely forgotten since inheritance laws have become more liberal. Initially, the Maine law limited the total allowable taxes to be paid in art to $500,000 a year. That amount was reduced to $100,000. But since most estates valued at less than $1 million are now exempt from estate taxes, the artist’s estate tax is no longer timely.
The Percent for Art program, however, has been going great guns, delivering several million dollars to almost 1,000 artists over the years.
Curiously, the man who shepherded both bills through the state legislature did not remember, if he ever knew, that UMVA had anything to do with the two bills. Then-House Majority Leader James Tierney (D-Lisbon) recalls that it was attending a lecture by New York arts attorney Ruben Gorewitz and a subsequent conversation with Gorewitz that prompted him to pursue the two bills.
UMVA co-founder Carlo Pittore, however, knew darn well that Gorewitz came to Maine because Pittore himself invited him. Pittore, in fact, complained in a 1979 letter to the editor of the weekly Maine Times that the newspaper’s coverage of the art bills “fails to mention that Maine Artists in the Union of Maine Visual Artists were responsible for bringing Ruben Gorewitz to Maine, and for introducing him to Jim Tierney, and beginning the process of arts legislation in Maine.”
Jim Tierney, who served as Maine Attorney General from 1980 to 1990 and now teaches at Harvard Law School, sponsored the estate tax law, along with Rep. Merle Nelson (D-Portland), Rep. Nancy Masterton (D-Cape Elizabeth), and Rep. Leonard (R-Woolwich). Tierney asked Assistant House Majority Leader Elizabeth Mitchell (D-Vassalboro) to sponsor the Percent for Art bill, which she did along with Rep. William Garsoe (R-Cumberland), Rep. Masterton, and Rep. Frank Wood (D-Sanford).
Initially, opponents of the Percent for Art law sought to have new school construction projects exempted, but that amendment was defeated. Indeed, schools have been among the primary beneficiaries of the Percent for Art law.
According to Maine Arts Commission program director Danielle Moriarty, there have been “420 Percent for Art projects employing more than 886 artists who produced more than 919 works of art totaling more than $9.5 million. There are currently five Percent for Art projects in process.”
Maine artists have the late, great Carlo Pittore and the Union of Maine Visual Artists to thank for all that work.