Featuring works by the photographers Lola Álvarez Bravo and Else 'Yva' Neuländer-Simon, the 2021 exhibition The New Woman Behind the...

Let's begin by understanding the meaning of this sentence. We'll use our understanding of pause points and segment the sentence as shown - understanding and assimilating the meaning of each segment bit by bit!

Sentence Structure

• Featuring works by the photographers Lola Álvarez Bravo and Else 'Yva' Neuländer-Simon,
• the 2021 exhibition The New Woman Behind the Camera
  • set out to provide a wide-ranging overview of photography by women
    • in the 1920s through the 1950s [?, and?]
• given the collection's breadth of more than 120 photos,
• its efforts
  • were largely successful.

Understanding the Meaning

Let's start reading from the beginning:

The sentence opens with:

• 'Featuring works by the photographers Lola Álvarez Bravo and Else 'Yva' Neuländer-Simon'
  • This tells us what was included in the exhibition - works by these two photographers

Then we get the main part:

• 'the 2021 exhibition The New Woman Behind the Camera set out to provide a wide-ranging overview of photography by women in the 1920s through the 1950s'
  • This tells us what the exhibition was trying to do - give a comprehensive look at women's photography across these decades

This is where we have the blank. Let's look at the choices:

• They vary between having nothing, just a comma, just "and," or comma + "and"
• This tells me we're deciding how to connect what we just read with what comes next

To see what works here, let's read the rest of the sentence and understand what it's saying!

After the blank, we have:

• 'given the collection's breadth of more than 120 photos, its efforts were largely successful'

Let me break this down:

• 'given the collection's breadth of more than 120 photos'
  • This is explaining WHY the efforts were successful - because the collection was broad (had more than 120 photos)
• 'its efforts were largely successful'
  • This is telling us the outcome - the exhibition's efforts (to provide that overview) were mostly successful

So the complete picture is:

• The exhibition set out to provide an overview, AND its efforts were largely successful (because the collection was so broad)

Now, what do we notice about the structure here?

Before the blank:

• 'The exhibition set out to provide an overview'
  • This is a COMPLETE THOUGHT - it has a subject (exhibition) and tells us what it did (set out to provide)
  • This could stand alone as its own sentence

After the blank:

• 'its efforts were largely successful'
  • This is also a COMPLETE THOUGHT - it has a subject (efforts) and tells us what happened to them (were successful)
  • The "given" part at the beginning is just extra reasoning, but the core 'its efforts were successful' could stand alone as its own sentence

When we have two complete thoughts that we want to connect into one sentence, we need proper punctuation. We can't just put them next to each other or use only a comma - we need a comma PLUS a connecting word like "and."

The correct answer is Choice A: "1950s, and"

This gives us both:

• The comma (signaling the pause between the two complete thoughts)
• The word "and" (connecting them and showing that the second thought adds related information to the first)

GRAMMAR CONCEPT APPLIED

Connecting Two Complete Thoughts with Comma + Coordinating Conjunction

When you have two complete thoughts (each with its own subject and verb, each able to stand alone as a sentence) and you want to join them into one sentence, you need proper punctuation. One of the most common methods is using a comma + coordinating conjunction (words like "and," "but," "or," "so," "yet," "for," "nor" - sometimes called coordinating conjunctions in grammar terms).

The Pattern:

[Complete thought], and [complete thought].

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comma coordinating conjunction

Why you need BOTH parts:

• The comma signals the pause between two major ideas
• The conjunction shows how the ideas relate (adding, contrasting, showing cause, etc.)

Examples:

• CORRECT: "The museum opened a new wing, and visitors flocked to see it."
  • First complete thought: "The museum opened a new wing"
  • Second complete thought: "visitors flocked to see it"
  • Connected with: comma + "and"

• INCORRECT: "The museum opened a new wing and visitors flocked to see it." (missing comma)
• INCORRECT: "The museum opened a new wing, visitors flocked to see it." (missing conjunction)
• INCORRECT: "The museum opened a new wing visitors flocked to see it." (missing both)

In our question:

• First complete thought: "the exhibition set out to provide a wide-ranging overview"
• Second complete thought: "its efforts were largely successful"
• Properly connected with: comma + "and" = "1950s, and"