The Talented Mr. Philbrick
Before long, many industry colleagues came to the same conclusion as Judd Grossman, an attorney representing some of Mr. Philbrick’s former clients. “It was a Ponzi-like scheme,” he said in an interview: selling one artwork more than once to get the funds to pay for another.
Although a British court has frozen Mr. Philbrick’s assets, and numerous former clients have filed lawsuits in London, Miami and New York, Mr. Philbrick has not been charged with a crime. He did not respond to emails and messages sent to his Instagram account. Calls to his cellphone rang until they didn’t.
New Kid on the Auction Block
“It’s very fashionable when someone does something wrong to say, ‘I always knew he was a criminal,” said Kenny Schachter, an artist, gadfly and columnist for Artnet. “I recently walked into one gallery and somebody tells me, ‘I knew from the beginning.’ I was like, ‘What about this deal you did with him? What about that deal you did with him?’ I’m not ashamed to admit I liked him. He was a little arrogant and he thought he knew better than everybody else, but in certain respects he did.”
Mr. Philbrick, now 32, also had provenance of his own.
His father, Harry Philbrick. is the respected former director of the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Conn., near where Inigo grew up. His mother, Jane, is a Harvard-educated writer and artist who teaches at Parsons School of Design.
After high school, Inigo matriculated at Goldsmith’s, University of London, a prestigious art school whose graduates include his father and the British dealer Jay Jopling.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/13/style/inigo-philbrick.html