#2- Elaine: The purpose of art museums is to preserve

[brcibake]

Not sure how I got this wrong but I thought the answer was E. It makes more sense to me because the two people were discussing masterpieces. I could kind of see why B is right, but I think that is just hindsight 20/20. Why not E?
Thank you!

[Francis O'Rourke]

Neither Elaine nor Frederick comment specifically on what experts identify as masterpieces. Elaine discusses getting the best works of art from each genre, while Frederick discussing getting the works of art of the "recognized masters." Let me know where you see evidence for answer choice (E) in the stimulus so that I can better help you with this question.

We can infer that Elaine would agree with answer choice (B), since she thinks museums should try to get examples from each period and genre. Frederick would disagree with this because he thinks the top priority is to get the works of the "masters," whether or not that includes anything from outside, say, Europe between 1400 and 1800.

[deck1134]

Hi PowerScore Staff,

I thought this question was wickedly hard for a #2.

I tried to apply the agree/disagree test, but was unable to see what answer would be correct. I think what threw me was that it simply isn't clear what Frederick means by "Masters." It sure doesn't seem that he would disagree with B, because we simply cannot say with certainty that the "Masters" would not exist in all genres. We also cannot eliminate that with certainty.

I understand that A is wrong. They would obviously agree about C. D seems out of scope due to irrelevancy. E does not do anything. I was able to conduct that analysis for this question, but could absolutely not understand how B worked. I stared at this question for a good two minutes, but am really not sure how I would have arrived at B. Like the above poster, I sort of see, with hindsight, what makes B the best answer choice. But I simply do not know how to answer a question like this correctly in the heat of the test. I'm not confident I could do it now. Any advice?

[Adam Tyson]

Focus on what goal each of our speakers have, Deck. What are the priorities here? Elaine clearly thinks that we should seek out the best examples of each genre, so she would say "yes" in response to answer B. Frederick, however, has different priorities. He thinks resources should be devoted to preserving the works of the recognized masters. Does he think it is a priority - something that we should actively "seek" - to represent all genres? No! He might be very happy if there were recognized masters in every genre, but he also might not care. That isn't what Fred wants us to seek, because then we might not select the sorts of artworks that he has prioritized.

Fred's priority is great art. He would not want us to seek representation of all genres, because that is the wrong priority. Seek the great art, not the art that represents all genres. Hurray if you get both, but no problem if you do not, so long as you get the great stuff.

[SGD2021]

Hello, can we always take “each” to mean the same thing as “all” on the LSAT? (here we had “each" in the Elaine part of the stimulus and “all” in answer choice B)

[Adam Tyson]

Yes indeed, SGD2021! "Each" means every one, or all. That's why it's one of the common Sufficient Condition indicators, since those indicate a 100% certainty. Conditional analysis wasn't called for in this case, but a statement about "each" thing is a statement about all of those things!