单项选择题

Passage One
Questions 52 to 56 are based on the following passage.
The squeeze is on. Museums everywhere are having trouble making ends meet, what with the overblown expansions they’ve made, the decline in investment income and the steep drop- off in contributions from foundations and individuals. Many have cut staff, frozen pay, trimmed exhibition schedules and slowed or stopped acquisitions. For some, that may not be enough., the American Folk Art Museum, to cite one example, recently admitted that it isn’t making debt payments.
What’s next In some corners, there’s fear that museum officials will do what is absolutely forbidden by art-world rules., raise operating cash with a sale of artwork. Already some respected figures — David Gordon, former head of the Milwaukee Art Museum, and Richard Armstrong, director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, for example—are saying that the rule against selling art for any purpose other than buying more art is wrong.
But the mere mention of art sales for operating money turns some purists (力求纯正者)purple with rage, and could restart the uproar that occurred last year when Brandeis University spread but withdrew from the idea of selling works from its Rose Art Museum, eventually prompting Jebuda Reinharz, the university president, to step down. Just before that, the National Academy Museum sold two Hudson River School paintings to pay its bills, eliciting tough sanctions from the normally hands-off Association of Art Museum Directors.
Many people don’t understand the problem. If the choice is between allowing a museum to fail and selling some art, what’s the big deal Sell art! Most museums, after all, hold many works they have no room to display and stuff them into back rooms and off-site storage facilities. If museums are allowed to choose from their collections to raise money to buy more art, why can’t they sell those very same pieces to solve their financial problems
The big deal is this.. The strict law-makers believe that once selling art to cover operating costs is allowed, it will become the first resort in bad times, not the last.
On that score, they may be right. It’s human nature to test the line and, having gotten away with something, to do it again. Some museum trustees and other large donors are themselves stretched, relatively speaking, by this recession and can’t or won’t increase their gifts. Yet no one knows when the economy will restore investment portfolios(证券投资组合) and bank accounts to their previous health. The money has to come from somewhere.
Maybe it’s best to amend the unwritten sales ban, but not end it. What if a museum had to argue its case for selling out art works before an unbiased judge
What can we learn from the third paragraph