Inigo Philbrick

Thursday

Laura Allsop

Inigo Philbrick, the art world’s wheeler dealer stealer

A few months after going on the lam in late 2019, the thirty-two-year-old wunderkind art dealer Inigo Philbrick sent his friend and colleague Orlando Whitfield a trove of documents. Philbrick wanted his old friend to write a sympathetic account of the misdeeds he stood accused of — since described as the biggest art fraud perpetrated in US history, for which Philbrick was later convicted and imprisoned. Whitfield has instead written All That Glitters, a memoir chronicling their friendship and dealings during a heady “gold rush” decade in the art world. Going through Philbrick’s correspondence and the court documents, Whitfield realized his friend was not the person he purported to be, certainly not the one his clients believed he was.

Philbrick

Thursday

Madeleine Feeny

My brilliant friend and betrayer, Inigo Philbrick

From our UK edition

‘Inigo has never asked me not to write this book, but I had come to wonder whether I would have had the courage to write it were he not imprisoned,’ confesses Orlando Whitfield in his coruscating memoir of his friendship with Inigo Philbrick. He was the art dealer whose meteoric career exploded in spectacular style when he was convicted, aged 35, of wire fraud in 2022. Imagine Whitfield’s alarm on hearing that Philbrick had been released from prison in time for publication. By ‘flipping’ art works, Philbrick increased his earnings from ‘£35k a year to £35k a month’ Philbrick, who owes $86,672,790 in restitution payments, will have ample opportunity – and cash incentives – to give his side.