#17 - Curator: Our museum displays only twentieth-century

[CCLSAT1995]

Hello,
I am having trouble with this problem. Can someone please explain the problem and the answers.
Thanks

[Robert Carroll]

CC,

The museum displays only certain sorts of works. Thus, if it's a work displayed, it must be a twentieth-century work and either on loan from private collectors or part of the permanent collection. Thus:

displayed 20thC

displayed loan or permanent collection

Anything in the permanent collection has prints sold in the store:

permanent collection print sold

Further, some things not in the collection also have prints sold

print sold permanent collection

And Hopper's Nighthawks is one of those.

The question is Must Be True, so we need something we can infer from the facts in the stimulus.

Answer choice (A) is not correct because we know some prints are not in the collection, but we don't know that they're all prints of things on display in the museum.

Answer choice (B) is not correct because, again, some prints are not in the collection, so they don't necessarily need all the restrictions of works displayed.

Answer choice (C) is the correct answer. If something is displayed but not on loan from a private collector, it has to be in the permanent collection (the second conditional I wrote says this). The third conditional says that all such things have prints sold.

Answer choice (D) contains new information.

Answer choice (E) also contains new information.

Robert Carroll

[MrMarvin]

Hello,

I'm still having trouble understanding why C has to be true.

Why can't Nighthawks be on loan from a private collector?

Or

Where in the stimulus does it say that the museum store cannot sell works on private loan?

The last sentence, as far as I can tell, only claims that the store sells some works that are not in the permanent collection (i.e. they could be on loan, or could be from somewhere else).

Thanks in advance!

[James Finch]

Hi Mr. Marvin,

(C) is correct because the second sentence states that "Prints of all the latter works (referring to paintings in the museum's permanent collection) are available in the museum store." As long as you catch that "the latter works" refers to the previous sentence's second part, the paintings in the museum's permanent collection, then this should be the only thing we can say definitively is going to be in the store, aside from Nighthawks.

Nighthawks we know isn't part of the museum's permanent collection, but we don't know if it's on loan from a private collector or whether it's only available as a print at the shop. We only know that some of the prints sold in the shop aren't in the permanent collection, but not whether they are on loan or not. These prints may be of paintings that are on display in the museum, on loan, or they may be elsewhere, neither on loan nor in the permanent collection, but still available as prints. So (A) is incorrect.

Nighthawks falls into this unknown status camp, so we don't have enough information to say that (D) or (E) must be true. So we're left between (C) and (B). The issue with (B) is that while we know the museum only displays 20th-century works, we have no idea if the store sells prints of works that are not 20th-century works. So we are left with (C) as the correct answer.

Hope this clears things up!

[sunshine123]

Howdy,

For this question we needed to distinguish between the things that the museums could and could not carry on display, and the things the museums STORE could and could not carry. That is one way of understanding the argument, but its a rather general and grammatically imprecise way of looking at things seeing that were referring only to the "distinction" between "things," or "groups" that is made in the argument, namely between things displayed and things sold. My question is whether we can and whether we should attribute to the distinction made in the argument a more grammatical character that perhaps sees the argument making a distinction between the subjects of the argument, or the objects of the argument, or some other grammatical unit? Or, should I keep my understanding at the level that sees there being a mere distinction made in the argument between two groups, the store and the display?

[Adam Tyson]

I'm not sure I see the grammatical issue you are seeing here, sunshine123. The stimulus appears to me to be very precise, and Robert's explanation using conditional diagrams captures that precision nicely.

Yes, there is a distinction between what is displayed and what is in the store, but we can say with absolute certainty that if something is displayed that is a part of the permanent collection, then prints of that work are available in the store. Anything displayed that is not on loan must be in that group. Thus, answer C must be true.