Art critic: Nowadays, museum visitors seldom pause to look at a work of art for even a full minute. They look, perhap...

shunhe on July 6, 2020

Hi @evelynakinyemi,

Thanks for the question! So let’s take a look at what the stimulus is telling us. We’re told that museum visitors don’t look at art as long anymore, which is supposed to tell us something about how our relationship to art changed over time. People are less willing to engage with art than they used to be.

Now this is a strengthen with necessary assumption question; we’re asked here to find an assumption that the passage depends on. And before we even look at the answer choices, we should be able to guess that it has something to do with connecting the distinct ideas of time spent looking at art with willingness to engage with art. Take a look at (E), which tells us that the amount of time spent looking at art is a reliable measure of engagement with that work. That’s exactly the pre-phrase mentioned above, and is the correct answer. We can test it with the negation test: let’s say that (E) is false, and that the amount of time spent looking at a work of art isn’t a reliable measure of engagement with that work. Then does the argument still hold? No! Since the argument concludes lack of engagement based on lack of time spent looking. And since the argument falls apart if we negate the answer choice, it’s a necessary assumption, and (E) is the correct answer.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.