Director, Glenn Lowry: Curator, Ann Temkin.
Curator, Ann Temkin: Here Oldenburg draws attention to how important packaging is to this entire world that he’s conjuring up in The Store. The Pepsi sign is American as apple pie. It's got the same red, white and blue that the American flag does. There's this patriotism that he both affectionately portrays and also mocks.
The role of the capitalist economy at this very lowest level of exchange was for Oldenburg, a way of bringing to people’s attention the contradictions and the ambiguities of the market economy that ruled not only buying and selling cans of soda, but the buying and selling of art.