The Board of Trustees of the Federici Art Museum has decided to sell some works from its collection in order to raise...

shunhe on September 14, 2020

Hi @ctb4,

Thanks for the question! So let’s take a look at what’s goin on in this problem. We’re told that the Board of Trustees of this museum decided to sell some works to make money to refurbish galleries. This may seem drastic, but the curator’s saying that some of these works are unsuccessful immature works by Renoir and Cezanne that should be sold anyway, since they basically suck and don’t add anything to the museum’s collection. The argument then concludes that the board's action won't detract from the quality of the museum's collection.

Now we’re asked for an assumption that the conclusion relies on; in other words, this is a strengthen with necessary premise question. And in reading the question above, you might have noticed a pretty obvious assumption: the only way that the second sentence is relevant to the rest of the argument is if the works sold were the works talked about there. If the museum didn’t sell those works, who cares if they suck? The museums that the museum sold might’ve been great and detract from the quality of the collection. So we need something that says that it’s those paintings that are sold, and not other good ones.

Now take a look at (B), which tells us exactly this: all of the paintings that the board of trustees sells will be among those that the curator recommends selling. Let’s use the assumption negation test: if it’s true that not all of the paintings that the board of trustees sells are among those the curator recommends selling, and at least one of them isn’t, then that painting could have been one that added quality, and thus detracts from the quality when it’s sold. And if that’s true, the argument falls apart, and so (B) is the correct answer choice here.

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

ctb4 on September 14, 2020

That helped a lot, thank you!