Q10 - The Board of Trustees

[WaltGrace1983]

This is a weaken question.

The "unsuccessful immature works" by Renoir and Cézanne are of inferior quality and will be sold
→
This action will not detract from the quality of the museum's collection

My first thought was that, just because these works are not independently considered great does not mean that they don't add to the whole quality of the museum. Perhaps simply having the early work really affects the museum's collection for the better! I doubt that anyone would say that throwing out the "old and immature" paintings of great artists would either not affect or better the museum; I think most would say that having the early work adds a nice touch and certainly adds to the quality of the museum.

(A) We don't care how they can raise funds. This is hinging on background information. We want to know about the overall quality of the museum's collection!

(B) This is not exactly what I predicted but is certainly very close. (B) states that the quality of the art collection as a whole can be determined by how an artist's development is represented (aka including the "immature" works).

(C) This, if anything, would just strengthen the premise that the works are not very meaningful. However, this definitely fails to weaken the idea that getting rid of the "immature works" would detract.

(D) This is completely irrelevant. What does inflation have to do with the quality of the museum's collection?

(E) But we aren't really interested in the "market;" we aren't interested in selling! We want to know about the quality of the museum's collection!

[uhdang]

I have a question for the choice A).
I can see that reasoning is whether board's action will have a negative impact on collection's quality or not. So, anything that weakens this argument would claim that the impact from board's action will result in inferior quality of collection.

For A, if I understood this right, this attacks the "selling" of a part of collection itself, NOT the IMPACT from this selling. I'm wondering if the action itself is disputed, what impact would this have on the argument. Is this just out of scope? I can see the subtle scope difference, but there is a bit of uncertainty in mind that tells me attacking the action of selling a part of collection could also weaken the argument.

I'm pretty convinced that there is a scope difference, so this doesn't affect the reasoning of the conclusion, but want to hear what others think.

[maryadkins]

Yes! Exactly. (A) is out of scope because whether the board could raise money without selling art doesn't impact the central issue--which is what effect the selling of the art will have on the quality of the collection.