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Many artists of the sixties expressed concern through their work about the materialism of American society, but few made the point so directly as Michael Stone. Stone’s sales racks, adapted from actual store fixtures, offered viewers inflated vinyl bags. Each bag holds a plastic-laminated photograph shot from the TV screen–readily available images, but disorientingly recontextualized in their double coats of plastic.

Television news, the Vietnam War, LA Police Chief Tom Reddin or, in the case of the work in the Laguna Art Museum collection, then-governor Ronald Reagan as a B-movie star: all are prepackaged commodities, available for a price.