A museum has been offered an undocumented statue.supposedly Greek and from the sixth century B.C.Possibly the statue is genuine but undocumented because it was recently unearthed or because it has been privately owned.However, an ancient surface usually has uneven weathering, whereas the surface of this statue has the uniform quality characteristically produced by a chemical bath used by forgers to imitate a weathered surface.Therefore, the statue is probably a forgery.
Which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the argument?
OG11-54(=OG179) A museum has been offered an undocumented statue, supposedly Greek and from the sixth century B.C. Possibly the statue is genuine but undocumented because it was recently unearthed or because it has been privately owned. However, an ancient surface usually has uneven weathering, whereas the surface of this statue has the uniform quality characteristically produced by a chemical bath used by forgers to imitate a weathered surface. Therefore, the statue is probably a forgery.
Which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the argument?
(A) Museums can accept a recently unearthed statue only with valid export documentation from its country of origin. (B) The subject’s pose and other aspects of the subject’s treatment exhibit all the most common features of Greek statues of the sixth century B.C. (C) The chemical bath that forgers use was at one time used by dealers and collectors to remove the splotchy surface appearance of genuinely ancient sculptures. (D) Museum officials believe that forgers have no technique that can convincingly simulate the patchy weathering characteristic of the surfaces of ancient sculptures. (E) An allegedly Roman sculpture with a uniform surface similar to that of the stature being offered to the museum was recently shown to be a forgery.