Donald Ellis Listed as One of Fifty Who Mattered in 2002

A featured article in Art & Auction lists Donald Ellis as one of 50 Who Mattered in 2002. ‘He has a great eye,’ Dennis Reif, chief curator of the Art Gallery of Ontario is quoted as saying. ‘He consistently locates high-quality pieces and has advanced the field by the thoroughness of his research.’

Ellis was put into national spotlight after appraising an 1840 Navajo First Phase Chief’s blanket believed to have belonged to Kit Carson at close to $500,000 in an episode of the Antiques Roadshow in Tucson. He later purchased and exhibited the blanket at New York’s Winter Antiques Show, where it was bought on behalf of the Detroit Institute of Arts by a private foundation. As the article notes, ‘almost 70 percent of the objects in Ellis’s standout booth at the Winter show sold for a total in excess of $2 million.’

Growing up near the Six Nations Reserve in southeastern Canada, and close to Princess Point, one of the three major trading realms of Indigenous North America, Ellis began collecting pottery shards and arrowheads as a 7-year old. He has been dealing with Native American art for over 25 years. The gallery now specialises in 18th and 19th century art from the Northwest Coast, Inuit, and Eastern Woodlands cultures.