PASSAGE 2 — HUMANITIES [1] A damaged mural confronts a museum with an uncomfortable choice. Leaving every loss visible respects the surviving material but may make the composition difficult to understand. Repainting missing areas can restore visual unity, yet it may cause modern invention to be mistaken for the artist's work. For much of the twentieth century, debate was framed as a contest between these two positions: strict preservation and seamless reconstruction. [2] A technique called discernible integration complicates that opposition. Conservators fill losses so that the image reads coherently from an ordinary viewing distance, but they use small marks or slightly differentiated tones that reveal the repair on close inspection. The method neither disguises all intervention nor treats every gap as untouchable. Instead, it asks a repair to perform differently at two viewing distances. [3] Some critics call this compromise unstable. They argue that most visitors never inspect a mural closely enough to distinguish the added paint, so the reconstruction still risks deception. Moreover, any completion reflects an interpretation of what was lost. A restrained guess, they insist, remains a guess. [4] These objections identify genuine limits, but they do not show that discernible integration is incoherent. Museums already use labels, lighting, and placement to guide interpretation; visual repair can be treated as another interpretive device, provided its basis is documented. The relevant ethical question is not whether interpretation can be avoided, but whether the museum makes its intervention available for scrutiny. QUESTION 6: The second paragraph primarily serves to

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