The Artist-in-Residence Projects
In the late 1970s, Hall conceived of a series of “artist-in-residence” projects that involved infiltrating three American institutions: professional sports, presidential politics, and television news. He described these "as being somewhere between cultural anthropology and performance art." Two of the projects were realized: professional sports through his residency with the San Francisco Giants baseball team (1977); and television news through his residency (in collaboration with Chip Lord and Jody Procter, 1979) at KVII television in Amarillo, Texas. Hall was scheduled to do the second in the series in late 1977 in the Carter White House that had been organized through the offices of Joan Mondale. However, days before it was supposed to start it was abruptly cancelled by the White House press liaison, probably fallout from a growing corruption scandal involving Bert Lance, a close friend of President Carter and Director of the OMB.
