In the 1967 film The Graduate, Mr. McGuire dispenses fatherly advice to recent college graduate Benjamin Braddock. “ I want to say one word to you, Benjamin. Just one word. Are you listening? Plastics! There’s a great future in plastics. Think about it. Will you think about it?” He did. So did many of America’s artists, who, fascinated by the technology, seized on its potential and incorporated the material into their work as technological and commercial developments in plastics flourished. Plastic was malleable, thin, translucent, lightweight, and could be stitched together or spliced, glued, melted, colored, and molded. For artists and designers, plastic in all its forms promised the possibility of creating unprecedented forms. At the same time, as it became the “material of modernity,” plastic was embraced as a vehicle to comment on ideas about disposability, as society began

Read More: Exhibition reveals artists’ fascination with plastic and their desire to comment on its implications