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Exhibit Without Walls
Clinton Visits

Clinton in Town
7/24/02

President Clinton was in town to address the Rainbow Push 
Convention with Reverend Jesse L. Jackson. This I realized 
at 10:30am Tuesday morning. 

The Rainbow Push Convention began the Saturday before. 
This - written on Wednesday – is about the Exhibit Without 
Walls presented on Tuesday.  

The Exhibit Without Walls consists of 28 quarter sheet 
fliers (one fourth of an 8 ½ X 11” sheet) each with one of 
28 different ART-ACT images which are passed out to the 
public in a single locale over a period of time more than 
an hour and less then a day or until one our more complete 
set of images are dispensed to willing participants. 

Tuesday morning I had eight exhibit packets left over from the 
Evanston Festival. There was no way I could be able to get near 
President Clinton – or even near the convention hall to distribute 
the art-act exhibit Without Walls, I estimated. Yet, it seemed 
a worthy challenge – to honor their presence by presenting the 
ART-ACT Exhibit Without Walls around the Hyatt Hotel where the 
Push Convention was being held. 

At 11:15 that morning I road my bike to the El Train and took 
it downtown on the “Red Line.” On my way to the Hyatt I passed 
Harold Washington College. That walk was along a crowded street 
and the people were a very diverse group. Arriving at the Hyatt 
an observer would notice immediately the contrast – the un-crowded 
spacious plaza. The people were older and less diverse with a 
sharp distinction between the hotel’s customers and the workers 
who ate lunch on the expansive plaza.

This was a more difficult group to pass the ART-ACT Exhibit 
Without Walls to. On my first walk around the Hyatt one out 
of three or four people accepted the art. Then I walked down 
a set of stairs into a sunken back entrance to the hotel used 
by staff. Workers lined the path down and all along past the 
entrance way and up the far set of stairs out on the opposite 
side. I offered art to every person and nearly everyone took 
a flier. Maybe they took it out of curiosity. Some may have 
wondered who this was approaching them and what was I selling?  
This worker group was a pocket of diversity huddled together 
in that spot on a broad cold slab of granite and marble. They 
were black, white and shades between. They were Latino, Asian, 
African and European. The contrast was made even more obvious 
when I continued around the Hyatt approaching the affluent 
Hotel patrons.

Once completely around the hotel, I took up a position in the 
shade of a building on a corner across from the Hyatt. Foot 
traffic to and from the Hyatt crossed this intersection. This 
was where I passed out most of the ART-ACT Exhibit Without Walls. 
The percentage of white faces passing that corner was decreased 
considerably by the presence of the Rainbow Push Convention. I 
offered fliers to everyone and they were accepted by more than 
refused. This was the lucky corner.

One man, a worker in his late forties stopped with the flier in 
his hand and without reading it reacted to my statement that it 
was “art.”

“Art, I don’t know. I don’t trust art any more because it might 
be mistreating the American Flag.” He must have been reacting 
to the “America Bless God” t-shirt I wore with the flag waving 
at the bottom of the screen-printed, sky-scape image. “I fought 
under the flag for eight years,” he stated looking ready to 
fight again if his view were challenged. 

“Did you fight for freedom as in freedom of speech?” I asked. 
We talked a bit after that and I assured him that no flags were 
desecrated in this exhibit. 

My intentions were not to involve him in discussing our exhibit 
policy on the US flag, which does not exist, or even extended 
political discussion. I wanted to give out as many fliers as 
possible. My hope was that others would do the discussing with 
each other. 

For the most part, what happens after I hand out a flier, I 
do not hear about. 

I found only one flier of the 250 that I gave out on the ground 
in my last pass around the Hyatt. Now, that is a real measure 
of success.

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