Neil David MacDonald is a fully accredited dealer and appraiser specializing in photography, rare books, and fine art. He carries a Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (uspap) 2014–2015 [2019] certificate as set by the Appraisal Standards Board of the Appraisal Foundation, Washington, DC. He has signed and adheres to the Code of Ethics of the Appraisers Association of America and conforms to the guidelines set forth by uspap.
For the past 30 years, Mr. MacDonald has worked in the field of art and antiques, focusing on auctions and the appraisal of rare books, fine art, and photographs. In 1992, he interned at Skinner Inc., in Boston and Bolton, Massachusetts. He subsequently worked at Riba Auctions in Wethersfield, Connecticut, and Ritchie’s Auctioneers in Toronto, eventually joining Waddington’s Auctioneers, Toronto, in 1993 as an expert consultant and appraiser, a position held until 2000. During those seven years, Mr. MacDonald organized approximately four auctions per year of books, collectibles, and photographs.
Parallel to his responsibilities with Waddington’s, he established himself as a dealer and has regularly issued catalogues that describe and illustrate historical material. Having appeared in Antiques! magazine and Maine Antique Digest, he has also written articles on the history of photography in Canada, and has been in the news discussing the subject, on such media outlets as CTV, CityTV, Breakfast Television, and CFRB Radio.
Mr. MacDonald has also been an advisor, agent, and curator for the Archive of Modern Conflict, Toronto and London (UK), one of the largest private collections in the world. In this role, he worked both nationally and internationally. He was integral to the AMC’s 2012 acquisition of the Isenburg Collection, the highest value sale of nineteenth-century photography in history.
As for exhibitions Mr. MacDonald has co-curated a number of shows, including First Photographs at the Stephen Bulger Gallery Toronto, 2012; Arctic Exposure: Photographs of Canada’s North at the McMichael Gallery Kleinberg , 2014; and The Photographs of Frank (Franz) Johnston also at the McMichael, in 2015; and Studio 54: Disco Tribes at Tenderbooks London UK, in 2019.
He remains a member of many professional and collector’s organizations, including the Ephemera Society of America, the Daguerreian Society, and the Photographic Historical Society of Canada, and previously an elected member of the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of Canada and the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers. He provides CRA and IRS compliant appraisals assignments made for cultural property, gifts in kind donation, family division and insurance.