#5 - Vandenburg: This art museum is not adhering to its

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Strengthen—PR. The correct answer choice is (A)

Vandenburg’s argues that the founder’s intent for the museum to devote the same level of attention
to contemporary art as to the art of earlier periods is not being fulfilled. Her evidence is that the
contemporary art collection is far smaller than other collections. Simpson counters that a relatively
smaller collection does not inherently signify inattention to contemporary art; rather, the small size
of this collection reflects the lack of high-quality contemporary art.

Since the stimulus is followed by a Strengthen question, the correct answer choice will support hte
author’s assertion that the lack of contemporary work in the museum is attributable to a lack of high
quality work of this era.

Answer choice (A): This is the correct answer choice. If it is true that “an art museum should
collect only works that its curators consider to be of high artistic quality”, then the driving force
behind the relatively small size of the museum’s contemporary art collection might not be lack of
attention to contemporary art, but rather lack of high quality contemporary art.

Answer choice (B): This answer forbids the museum to collect works which fail to devote as much
attention to contemporary art as to the art of earlier periods. This principle would justify the rejection
of various pieces of art on an individual basis, but does not help explain why the contemporary art
collection is justifiably small compared to other collections. Nor does it reflect any of the reasoning
offered by Simpson.

Answer choice (C): Answer choice (C) does help further explain Simpson’s contrast between an art
museum and an ethnographic museum. However, it does not distinguish any artistic period from any
other and thus offers no support for the relative lack of contemporary art. In other words, if (C) were
true, why would any of the art collections need to be large? Such a purpose would justify limited
collections in general, not just contemporary art.

Answer choice (D): This answer is about ethnographic museums and is a Shell Game answer
choice. Simpson and Vandenburg disagree about whether this art museum is adhering to its purpose;
principles for curating ethnographic museums cannot justify Simpson’s reasoning.

Answer choice (E): This answer is perhaps an attempt to sway readers who believe that Simpson
rejects the founder’s intentions, but the answer references the curator’s intentions and Simpson’s
argument explicitly appeals to the curator’s belief that there is little high-quality contemporary art.
Furthermore, there is no evidence to suggest that Simpson believes the founders’ intentions to be
irrelevant.

[lsatstudier]

Hi,

Thank you for answering all of my questions so far! I really appreciate your help.

In regards to this question, a Strengthen - PR, I am having a hard time figuring out the answer. I think part of my problem is that I don't necessarily come up with a prephrase right away, but sometimes I feel like I don't know what to even say as a prephrase.

In looking at this question, what would your prephrase be, and how would you come up with it? Is there another way I can work around the prephrase idea when one does not come to me right away? Also, any suggestions for approaching a Strengthen -PR question?

Thank you!

[Jonathan Evans]

Studier,

I share your frustration sometimes with questions such as these. From time to time, when I am parsing out the structure of the stimulus, I find myself actually doing unnecessary work predicting nuanced connections that the LSAT does not even address. One aspect of questions that you may consider is simply what the expected level of difficulty should be. Toward the beginning of LR sections, the questions tend to skew easier; in other words a greater percentage of students answer them correctly.

For these questions, it may be sufficient simply to [1] identify the claim or conclusion that is made, [2] make note of the evidence offered, [3] and then make a prediction of what you would like to accomplish based on the task of the question stem.

Since this particular question asks you to look for what would "most" help to justify the conclusion, you're kinda off the hook. The fact that we're looking for simply something that helps and not exclusively for something sufficient to justify the conclusion means that there may be any number of ways to improve the likelihood that we have a valid conclusion.

An important point to remember: When faced with a weaker argument and a Strengthen or Weaken question, it will often be difficult to come up with a precise prediction of what the credited response will say. Instead, have an idea of what the credited response will do.

In this case you need some additional evidence to suggest that Simpson is correct to conclude that the relatively small collection size of modern art is appropriate. What evidence has he offered so far? Simply that the museum curators have decided things should be that way. One acceptable way to bolster the conclusion would simply to be to suggest that the curators are correct in their judgment. This is what answer choice (A) accomplishes for us.