32 new york | march 16–29, 2020
For a few years,
Inigo Philbrick and
I were inseparable.
And then it turned out he
was running a con.
Not that he thinks
he did anything wrong.
But did I?
Mini-Madoff
THEby
KENNY
SCHACHTER
Ar t World
’
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when i first met Inigo Philbrick in 2012, he was
all of 25, looked an awful lot like Justin Timberlake,
and was running an art gallery called Modern Col-
lections in London’s Mayfair district. Despite sound-
ing like a spinoff of Bed Bath & Beyond, it was
backed by the astute and prescient art insider Jay
Jopling, who’d founded White Cube gallery and
helped give the world the careers of Tracey Emin
and Damien Hirst—for better or worse. I was imme-
diately smitten, professionally and personally; Phil-
brick was sharp, fun, and funny.
He was slim, neither short nor tall, with closely
cropped gingerish curls and carefully manicured
stubble to the point just shy of reaching a fully fledged
beard. He was American but vaguely posh accented,
with an English-educated art-museum-curator
father, Harry Philbrick, whom he’d followed to Gold-
smiths, University of London, as a fine-arts student.
The sort of person who fit in seamlessly among the
well-educated, well-tailored, well-traveled tribe that
populates the art world, even if, unlike so many of
them, he didn’t happen to have the inherited funds.
Already, however, he had the airy arrogance and pro-
found self-assuredness you find in the smoothest and
most convincing of art dealers.2015: lnigo Philbrick, left, and the writer,
in St. Moritz on New Year’s Eve.And MeY ___ DD ___ AD ___ PD ___ EICTRANSMITTED________ COPY ___ DD ___ AD ___ PD ___ EIC0620FEA_Inigo_lay [Print]_36890243.indd 33 3/13/20 10:24 PMwhen i first met Inigo Philbrick in 2012, he was
all of 25, looked an awful lot like Justin Timberlake,
and was running an art gallery called Modern Col-
lections in London’s Mayfair district. Despite sound-
ing like a spinoff of Bed Bath & Beyond, it was
backed by the astute and prescient art insider Jay
Jopling, who’d founded White Cube gallery and
helped give the world the careers of Tracey Emin
and Damien Hirst—for better or worse. I was imme-
diately smitten, professionally and personally; Phil-
brick was sharp, fun, and funny.
He was slim, neither short nor tall, with closely
cropped gingerish curls and carefully manicured
stubble to the point just shy of reaching a fully fledged
beard. He was American but vaguely posh accented,
with an English-educated art-museum-curator
father, Harry Philbrick, whom he’d followed to Gold-
smiths, University of London, as a fine-arts student.
The sort of person who fit in seamlessly among the
well-educated, well-tailored, well-traveled tribe that
populates the art world, even if, unlike so many of
them, he didn’t happen to have the inherited funds.
Already, however, he had the airy arrogance and pro-
found self-assuredness you find in the smoothest and
most convincing of art dealers.2015: lnigo Philbrick, left, and the writer,
in St. Moritz on New Year’s Eve.And Me