Governors State University to Host Art-O-Mat Inventor

Governors State University will host a presentation by Clark Whittington, the inventor of the Art-O-Mat, a quirky art vending machine concept. The event will take place on Tuesday, April 4, from 5 to 6:30 p.m. in Sherman Hall, at the university’s main campus located at 1 University Parkway in University Park, IL. Art-O-Mat is the invention of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, artist Clark Whittington. Whittington began the Art-O-Mat craze when he refurbished an antique cigarette machine to vend one-of-a-kind art pieces in 1997. The concept was an immediate hit, and Whittington’s Art-O-Mat machines have subsequently been featured on CBS, in Newsweek, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, and Reader’s Digest. Governors State University has been home to an Art-O-Mat since September of 2005. Similar machines are on display in the Chicago Cultural Center, New York’s Whitney Museum, and the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art