PrepTest 127, Section 1, Question 17
Curator: Our museum displays only twentieth-century works, which(48 more words not shown)
If the curator's statements are(9 more words not shown)
- AEvery print in(26 more words not shown)
- BEvery print that(13 more words not shown)
- CThere are prints(21 more words not shown)
- DHopper's Nighthawks is(16 more words not shown)
- EHopper's Nighthawks is(5 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
The museum's display and the museum's shop are not the same collection. Keep them separate from the start.
Everything displayed is a twentieth-century work, and every displayed work comes from one of two sources: a private collector's loan or the permanent collection. That does not describe every object the museum might have in storage, and it does not yet tell us everything the shop sells.
The shop has prints of all the latter works. “Latter” means the second group just mentioned: the permanent collection. We have a guarantee about prints of those works, not a limit saying the shop sells nothing else. In fact, it also sells prints of works outside that collection, including Nighthawks.
What we’re looking for
The task is to find what must follow from those facts. We should be careful not to assume that a print in the shop means the original is on display. A museum could sell a print of an artwork located somewhere else. Instead, track which displayed works we can place in the permanent collection; those are the ones for which the print guarantee will apply.
Working the answers
- A
The two categories describe the works on display, not all works whose prints the shop sells. The store could also sell a print of the Mona Lisa while neither owning nor borrowing the original. Nothing restricts every print to the two sources A gives.
- B
The twentieth-century restriction likewise applies to the displayed works. The shop could sell prints of earlier artwork housed elsewhere. Knowing the dates of the exhibits does not tell us the dates of every work represented in the store.
- CCorrect
Start with a work on display that is not on loan from a private collector. There are only two possible categories for a displayed work, so eliminating the loan category leaves the permanent collection. The shop has prints of all those works.
That gives us the full connection: displayed and not borrowed means part of the permanent collection; part of that collection means a print is available. C asks only about the works that satisfy the first description, so every one of them falls under the print guarantee.
- D
The passage tells us that Nighthawks is not in the permanent collection and that its print is sold in the shop. It does not say the original is on display. Without that fact, we cannot apply either the twentieth-century display restriction or the two-source rule to establish D. Outside knowledge about the painting is not a premise here.
- E
Not belonging to the permanent collection does not prevent a work from being displayed: it could be on loan. Nighthawks could be a displayed loan or a work located elsewhere. The information about its print does not settle either possibility, so we cannot conclude that it is absent from the display.
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