From: AlanBaggett@volcanomail.com   
      
   EDITORIAL: When great art of Annie Leibovitz meets the tax cops : CRA SOTW   
      
   Published July 17, 2017 - 6:14am in the Chronicle Herald   
      
   Make no mistake about it: Annie Leibovitz is a “celebrity photographer” in   
   every sense of the word.   
      
   By creating extraordinary portraits of the great and the beautiful — from a   
   nearly-nude Serena Williams to a fully-clothed Queen Elizabeth — Leibovitz   
   has become a celebrity herself.   
      
   But her photographs — hundreds of which are now warehoused at the Art   
   Gallery of Nova Scotia — don’t quite qualify as “art”, according to   
   the art prefects at the Canadian Cultural Property Export Review Board.   
      
   As a result, the gallery has not been able to display the photographs it   
   received four years ago, to great fanfare, from the family of Al and Faye   
   Mintz of Toronto.   
      
   It seems the cultural guardians at the review board don’t believe all   
   Leibovitz photographs qualify as cultural property of “outstanding   
   significance and national importance.”   
      
   This is absurd.   
      
   Leibovitz is the best-known portrait photographer on the planet, and has been   
   for a very long time. Her work is arresting, diverse, compelling and   
   controversial — everything that a body of great art should be.   
      
   Is her work of national importance? Well, it sure as heck would be if Nova   
   Scotia’s little gallery could curate an exhibition of the Leibowitz   
   portraits it obtained four years ago, and then put the show on the road across   
   Canada.   
      
   The gallery is prevented from doing so for reasons that no one has fully   
   explained. But three factors seem to be at play here.   
      
   A mentioned, the philistines at the Canadian Cultural Property Export Review   
   Board are refusing to do the right thing.   
      
   Two, the Mintz family won’t pay the full US$4.75 million purchase price for   
   the photographs unless the review board puts a stamp of approval on the work.   
      
   Three, the Canada Revenue Agency is treating the Mintz family’s donation as   
   a possible tax grab.   
      
   In short, the tax cops appear to be in charge of cultural policy in Canada.   
      
   This has all ended up in court, and hopefully some wise arbiter will someday   
   determine the value of the Mintz gift to the gallery, which will help   
   establish the value of the tax credit that is being sought with regard to the   
   donation.   
      
   In the meantime, we do know that the Liebovitz images — including an iconic   
   photograph of John Lennon and Yoko Ono taken hours before Lennon was gunned   
   down on a Manhattan street — are very valuable now and will become priceless   
   in the future.   
      
   As for the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia itself, it is caught in the crossfire   
   and is left holding, through no fault of its own, an invaluable archive of   
   photographs it cannot show to the world.   
      
   Godspeed to a resolution, then. Good thing that great art endures for   
   centuries, even longer than tax disputes, cultural cops, and court cases.   
      
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