Q2 - Elaine: The purpose of art

[ohthatpatrick]

What does the Question Stem tell us?
ID the Disagreement

Break down the Stimulus:

E: Purpose of museums = preserve and display. Museums should try to acquire and display the best examples of periods and genres (whether or not considered masterpieces).
F: Museums should acquire the work of masters, in order to ensure greatest artworks are preserved.

Any prephrase?
Does F argue that the purpose of museums is NOT to preserve and display art? He doesn't specifically comment on the purpose of a museum, although it's implied that he thinks preserving great artworks is part of it. Sounds more like agreement. Does F say "museums should NOT go after the best examples of art from each period/genre"? Yes, he does. He says instead that "museums should go after the works of recognized masters". These don't have to always contradict, but there is definitely a disagreement here in terms of what a museum's priorities should be. The keywords to look for, then, are "They disagree about what an art museum SHOULD/OUGHT to do".

Correct answer:
B

Answer choice analysis:
A) Off topic. Neither comments, and this isn't getting at the disagreement about what museums should do.

B) Worth keeping since it starts "museums SHOULD". Initially not very appealing to me, but it does work. Elaine said YES, we should get the best example from EACH period and genre. Frederick said NO, we should go after the works of recognized masters. (Even though the work of a recognized master may sometimes be the best example of art from that period and genre, it's still true to say that E and F disagree about whether this statement in (B) is a museum's goal)

C) They would agree about this.

D) Neither would go for this one.

E) This is similar to (A). Who was debating whether masterpieces are masterpieces? We were arguing about what type of stuff a museum should prioritize going after.

Takeaway/Pattern: After you've read both parties' statements, revisit Person 1's claims and ask yourself, "Did Person 2 try to argue the OPPOSITE of this claim?" By finding which claim / assumption made in Person 1's paragraph is the source of opposition, you can get a sharper prephrase. If we stayed vigilant to our prephrase that these two were fighting about what a musuem should/ought to do, then we only have three choices, (B), (C), and (D), to consider.

#officialexplanation

[trevor.lovell]

I'm just a little frustrated with this one. There's really no evidence that there is any disagreement about genres or time periods, but clearly they do not agree about the relative value of being a "recognized" master. I understand that answer "A" is not about museum purchasing policies, which is what the conversation is about, but doesn't it seem more supported that they would disagree about the value of "masterpieces" done by un-recognized masters than about the breadth of genres and time periods to be included?

[aileenann]

Hi Trevor. The first thing to remember is that for 2 authors to disagree about something, they both must have said something about it - or at the very least given a very strong statement from which we can infer their opinion on that particular thing.

I would say (A) is out because we don't know what either of them thinks about recognition of masters. It's not that (A) is not directly on topic (for this sort of question, they often ask about a side issues rather than the main shebang). Rather, we simply don't know what either of them thinks about the recognition of masterpieces.

On the other hand, (B) is a good answer because we do know what they think. Elaine wants all genres represented whereas Frederick is all about getting the masters and not about greater inclusivity.

All the other answers, like (A), have a topic that either one or both did not discuss or imply anything about.

I hope this helps. Do please follow up if you have additional questions or thoughts of your own you'd like to share. It's always a pleasure to get some feedback.

[trevor.lovell]

That's definitely helpful - thanks!

I was fooled by Frederick placing an emphasis on acquiring the work of "recognized" masters while Elaine goes to the trouble of using the awkward phrasing "works not recognized by experts as masterpieces."

However, this still doesn't come right out and say that Elaine thinks that some masterpieces are unrecognized, and nothing says that Frederick would disagree that there are unrecognized masterpieces - he just thinks that museums shouldn't purchase them.

What is definitely true is that Elaine thinks museums should acquire works from all genres and time-periods, and since Frederick neglects to agree with this, it is more likely that this is what they would disagree about.

[alena21century]

I still don't understand why B is the correct answer. Frederick never mentions a word about genre. Is there an assumption that the works of recognized masters will be of the same genre or two?

[hamham]

This question is giving me a lot of trouble. I have the same question as alena21century. Could anyone clarify? Just because Frederick believes that the museum should acquire recognized masters, that leads to disagreeing that museums should NOT seek to represent all genres? What if for each genre, there was at least 1 recognized masters?

[hamham]

Can someone please explain ^.

[rinagoldfield]

Hi Hamham,

Thanks for your question. Elaine explicitly prioritizes displaying artworks from each genre over displaying masterpieces. Fredrick says, no, let’s just focus on masterpieces.

Your question is, I think: how do we know which genres have masterpieces? What if every genre has a masterpiece? In that case, wouldn’t the disagreement be moot?

Let’s imagine that every artistic genre includes masterpieces. In that case, even if we follow Frederick’s advice, museums may end up displaying works from every genre. Does that mean that Frederick thinks we should see collecting pieces from every genre as a museum’s goal? No. Collecting individual masterpieces is still his goal. That the museum ended up with a piece from every genre is incidental.

Elaine and Frederick disagree about what museums should focus on when designing their collections. Frederick’s goal is masterpieces, so he would disagree with (B).

Does that make sense?

[kyuya]

Elaine:

- preserve + make art works available = purpose of art museums
- therefore, should get best examples of artworks from each period and genre, even if they are not recognized as master pieces.

The implication of Elaine's statement is this: Consider genre A and genre B of art. In genre A, every single piece of art is better than any piece of art in genre B. However, according to Elaine's reasoning, this shouldn't mean that we fill the museum up with genre A. There is more here at play than simply how great the art is considered; we must take into account the period, and the genre, and not rely solely on experts declaring something a master piece.

Frederick:

- states that art museums purpose is to get the BEST art
- so that means Frederick isn't concerned about having the same diversity of genre / period as Elaine, but just wants the BEST.

The disagreement is about the criteria the art museums should use to pick the art that they display.

To make things simpler, we could use an analogy considering a popular debate about the use of race in admission standards for institutions of higher learning. Elaine would say "no, we need take into account race, religion, socio-economic status, etc" while Frederick would say, "no! We only need to see GPA and SAT scores". Make sense? Elaine is stating that there is something more important than traditional standards, while Fred disagrees.


(A) Neither of them state anything about this.

(B) This is the correct response. What would Elaine say about this? Well she says explicitly that she DOES want this. But remember Fred? He said he doesn't care, he wants the best. Fred would say "I don't want all the genre's. I want the BEST art work". If it so happened to be varied genre's, presumably Fred would be cool with it. But that is not the criteria he is using.

(C) They would both AGREE with this, but not about which type of art. They both talk about preserving art.

(D) Price is never brought up by either of them, which is a tell of a wrong answer choice here. If they both have no opinion about price, how could they disagree about it?

(E) Again, they don't either state an opinion on if they believe experts are very accurate about saying a work of art is a master piece or not. Elaine says they should add works even in SPITE of the experts opinions, but that doesn't mean she things they are WRONG. She is simply putting more importance on things that are not the opinion of those who evaluate art. Furthermore, Fred seems to think they are quite accurate, because he bases his opinion on it.

[zhm222006]

Have to say thank you very much. Your explanation is very helpful.

[andrewgong01]

I am coming up with implementation intentions for this question since it really confused me and it was only Q2. Would you say it is fair that in ID agree/disagree questions we should also look for when opinion/subjective words are used as that tends to have a greater room for disagreement (or agreement)? In this question the credited response used "should" whereas most of the other choices were stating facts and that in the passage the question of museum goals was also phrased as "ought" and "should"

[VickX462]

I went for answer choice D in the beginning. Now that I have thought about it, I think it is wrong for the following reason:

According to Elaine, the museum should always go for the best example. There is no mention of budget in Elaine's argument. According to the answer choice, there are more characteristic examples. Despite them being "prohibitively expensive", Elaine would still think that the museum should go for them.

"Unusual painting" ≠ "work of recognized master"
Fredrick thinks that the museums should "devote limited resources to acquiring the works of recognized masters." An unusual painting may or may not be the work of a recognized. It could be a weird painting painted by an unknown street artist or one painted by van Gogh.

[JenniferK632]

I'm not seeing the textual support for F disagreeing that museums should NOT go after the best examples of art from each period/genre. Could this be a point of disagreement when F does not mention it? Does the "genre/period's" lack of mention warrant it to be a point of disagreement?

[quote="
Any prephrase?
Does F argue that the purpose of museums is NOT to preserve and display art? He doesn't specifically comment on the purpose of a museum, although it's implied that he thinks preserving great artworks is part of it. Sounds more like agreement. Does F say "museums should NOT go after the best examples of art from each period/genre"? Yes, he does. He says instead that "museums should go after the works of recognized masters". These don't have to always contradict, but there is definitely a disagreement here in terms of what a museum's priorities should be. The keywords to look for, then, are "They disagree about what an art museum SHOULD/OUGHT to do".[/quote]

[Laura Damone]

What a tricky question for a #2!

The textual evidence for F's disagreement with (B) is in the phrase "ought to devote their limited resources to..."

If you said to me "I'm going to the beach this weekend" and I replied "you ought to devote your limited weekend time to LSAT practice," I am saying that you should be doing LSAT exclusively. That's what you should devote your limited weekend to, end of story.

By that rational, F does disagree with (B). If you asked him, "Should museums seek to represent all genres of art in their collections?" he would say "No, museums should devote all of their limited resources to acquiring the works of recognized masters to ensure the preservation of the greatest artworks."

Hope this helps!

[AnnaT620]

Hello Laura

Thank you for the above, very helpful! Such a tricky question!

Please could you clarify why D is incorrect? I'm not sure I am clear on this yet.

Many thanks!

[Laura Damone]

Sure thing! I agree with Patrick that neither speaker would definitely agree with (D). If you asked Fred, he would be a hard no: he only wants masterworks, period. If you asked Elaine, she'd be a maybe. We know for sure that she wants "the best examples of artworks from each artistic period and genre" with the goal of "preserv[ing] artworks [to] make them available to the public." But does that mean she definitely would favor getting a weird-o example of a certain period or genre if the best examples were too spendy? Not necessarily. We've got to stick close to the text and go with what we know for sure. If she can't have the best, we don't know what she would want.

Hope this helps!

[JeremyK460]

E:
the purpose of a museum is to preserve the art
museums should acquire the best examples of art from each period and genre
it doesn't matter if they're recognized as a masterpiece

F:
in order to preserve the greatest artwork (fulfill its purpose)
museums should buy the works of recognized masters

analysis (paraphrasing lots):
F is saying if the museum isn't preserving the greatest artwork, then the museum shouldn't buy it

E is saying if the museum isn't buying it, then it's not a piece from every genre

(b) on the face of it E agrees and F maybe too (like what posters above have said: there might be a masterpiece for every period/genre)
that supposition is indifferent to the 'whyfor' of what i inferred from E and (b)

(b) assumes if a museum doesn't seek to represent every genre, it isn't even a museum (not fulfilling it's purpose; which is to preserve art)
this is something F disagrees with because F believes that a museum's artwork can have works by recognized masters and fulfill its preservation purposes without the collection being representative of every single genre

i'm in the same boat as the other posters tho! if it weren't for POE i wouldn't've reluctantly chosen (b) while timed. it would've taken me way too long to make sense of (b)

answer choices:
(a) is about the masterpieces that experts are like 'nah, we don't think this is a masterpiece'
but F doesn't concretely know info about what MASTERPIECES are or aren't recognized by experts

(c) the world here is so large. terms are so extensive. they both agree.

(d) i'm not too sure about what F thinks, but i think F would want the more expensive Picasso over the unusual piece by Joe Schmo. and i think E wouldn't care, as long as the piece best exemplifies the period/genre and if it's a more expensive Picasso, then so be it.

(e) E commits to the existence of artwork that can best exemplify a period / genre without being an 'expert-recognized masterpiece' but that's as far as he goes. he doesn't assert anything about all 'expert-recognized masterpiece'. F has nothing
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