The Kalahari assemblage arrived in Berlin in 1931, and for sixty years it stood at the centre of the ethnographic collection without public controversy. In the 1990s, however, critics began to describe the assemblage as misrepresented. In the first place, the objects were displayed without any indication of the transactions by which they had left southern Africa. Against this, the collection's defenders point out that the acquisition was contractually documented. The agreements were signed, the payments recorded, and the correspondence preserved in the museum's own archive. On the documentary record, the defenders argue, the assemblage was acquired through ordinary commercial exchange, and to describe it as misrepresented is to apply present-day expectations to a transaction that was unexceptional at the time.

The dispute turns on a question the documentary record does not answer. The agreements establish that objects changed hands and that payments were made. They do not establish what the communities understood they were consenting to — in particular, whether the signatories understood that the objects would be displayed publicly, indefinitely, and outside any continuing relationship with the communities from which they came. The defenders treat documentation as evidence of consent. The critics treat it as evidence of a transaction whose terms were never explained. What would settle the dispute is therefore not further argument about the ethics of display but the recovery of records bearing on what the communities understood at the time. Until such records are located, the dispute remains open, and the assemblage continues to be exhibited.

The passage implies that the recovery of the records described in the final sentence would be significant primarily because such records would

A. indicate whether the museum's archive was deliberately incomplete
B. establish whether the signatories understood the terms to which they were agreeing
C. show that the communities retained ownership of the objects after their transfer
D. demonstrate that the payments recorded in the archive were lower than market value
E. confirm that the defenders misread the contractual documents



Which of the following claims about the acquisition of the Kalahari assemblage does the passage support more strongly?

A. The acquisition was conducted in a manner consistent with the norms of its time.
B. The acquisition is properly described as misrepresented on the basis of the documentary record alone.
C. The acquisition remains disputed because the surviving documentation addresses the fact of transfer but not the scope of consent.
D. The acquisition was unexceptional when it occurred, but the passage's argument does not depend on that point.
E. The acquisition was contractually documented, but the documentation is insufficient to resolve the dispute without further evidence.



The second paragraph functions primarily to

A. supply evidence that the first paragraph's description of the dispute omitted
B. identify the specific question on which the dispute turns and name what would settle it
C. argue that the critics' position is better supported than the defenders'
D. reconcile the two positions by showing that both are partly correct
E. extend the dispute to a broader class of comparable acquisitions