ShmoopTube

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Here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by museums. The kind where the exhibits come

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to life at night.

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According to the information given in Passage 1, what is the main purpose of the new museum?

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Passage 1 discusses several aspects of the National Museum of the American Indian, but

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the question wants us to identify the museum's "main purpose."

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In the grand tradition of main-purpose-slash-main-point-slash-main-okay-we-get-the-idea questions...

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...we can start by eliminating too-specific answer choices.

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A museum totally dedicated to the contemporary art of American Indians sounds like a great idea...

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This museum has a wider scope than art, however, so we can eliminate choice (C) for being too specific.

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Only focusing on Eastern natives sounds way

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too specific to be the main purpose of this national museum.

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We can get rid of choice (E) as well.

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Line 42 mentions the importance of educating non-Americans Indians...

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But nowhere is educating American Indians mentioned. Not only is choice (B) getting

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at something that's too specific, it's also completely wrong.

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This answer is a little sneaky. The author does say that the purpose of the museum has

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a wider focus than the terrible genocide of American Indians.

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However, he doesn't say that the museum is trying to "downplay" or make the issue

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seem less important than it really it is.

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Choice (A) is all kinds of wrong.

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In lines 31-37, the author describes the museum as "not so much about the past" and more about

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Native American culture "today," so (D) is the correct answer.

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Random thought: for Ben Stiller's next film project, we'd like to see a combination

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of Meet the Parents and Night at the Museum...

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