When storing Renaissance oil paintings, museums conform to standards that call for careful control of the surrounding temperature and humidity, with variations confined within narrow margins. Maintaining this environment is very costly, and recent research shows that even old oil paint is unaffected by wide fluctuations in temperature and humidity. Therefore, museums could relax their standards and save money without endangering their Renaissance oil paintings.
Which of the following is an assumption on which the argument depends?
When storing Renaissance oil paintings, museums conform to standards that call for careful control of the surrounding temperature and humidity, with variations confined within narrow margins. Maintaining this environment is very costly, and recent research shows that even old oil paint is unaffected by wide fluctuations in temperature and humidity. Therefore, museums could relax their standards and save money without endangering their Renaissance oil paintings.
Which of the following is an assumption on which the argument depends?
ARenaissance paintings were created in conditions involving far greater fluctuations in temperature and humidity than those permitted by current standards.
BUnder the current standards that museums use when storing Renaissance oil paintings, those paintings do not deteriorate at all.
CMuseum collections typically do not contain items that are more likely to be vulnerable to fluctuations in temperature and humidity than Renaissance oil paintings.
DNone of the materials in Renaissance oil paintings other than the paint are vulnerable enough to relatively wide fluctuations in temperature and humidity to cause damage to the paintings.
EMost Renaissance oil paintings are stored in museums located in regions near the regions where the paintings were created.
No. Comparison between conditions in which paintings were made and painting are stored can at most strengthen the argument but can't serve as an assumption.
No information has been provided in the passage to prove that more fluctuation paintings undergone during their creation will result in a greater endurablity towards the environment fluctuation during the storage.
Step #1. Search for Conclusion: Museum could relax its storage environment standards and save money without endangering their Renaissance oil paintings.
Step #2. Search for Premise:
P1 Maintaining standard storing environment is costly;
P2 Old oil paint is unaffected by wide fluctuation
Step #3. Search for reasoning gap between premise and conclusion : Old oil paint-->Renaissance oil painting
Step #4. Prephrase: How to close this gap?
Paint--> Painting: Paint is a substance used as coating to protect or decorate a surface while painting is a picture created with paints, in other words, paint is only one of the many elements used to constitute a painting.
Clearly, paint being sufficient to environmental fluctuation can not be cited as a sufficient evidence to prove other painting materials-canvas,frame,etc- can also hang tough towards environment change. So answers eliminating this possibility could be the right answer.
Answer A would be misleading if you don't read closely--the environment when this painting was actually created is fundamentally different from the environment when it is stored. So this choice has gone far beyond the conclusion.