[ubuntu] Ubuntu Software showing blank icons

Just installed Ubuntu 16.4LTS 64-bit on an old Toshiba Laptop. When I open "Ubuntu Software" the main screen shows several "editor's picks" and "Recommended Graphics Applications" but when I try to drill down into any catagories, the right-hand pane just shows what I'd describe as 'skeleton tiles'. just round-coered recatangles with 3 dots in the center.

On a previous install from the same media on the same machine this seemed to work OK. I had another issue with that install and since I'm just getting started chose to just blow it away and completely reinstall from scratch. Now this.

Personal background: 35+years in IT as a programmer and DBA, supporting IBM Sys-360 and its descendents, OS-2, every version of Windows since 3.1, Solaris, AIX, HPUX, and Oracle Linux (Red Hat). This is my first foray into Linux as a personal desktop and is strongly motivated the Windows 10 fiasco. (Still trying to recovery my primary personal laptop from that!) I'm sure I'll be starting other threads over the next few weeks.