The Textile Arts Center in Philadelphia houses an extensive collection of contemporary fiber art, featuring works by 78 artists who...

Sentence Structure

Sentence 1:

The Textile Arts Center in Philadelphia houses an extensive collection of contemporary fiber art, featuring works by 78 artists who pioneered innovative weaving techniques in the late 20th century.

Sentence 2:

• Each piece is accompanied by detailed provenance information,
• and photographs in the (?) archive document the (?) evolution of their creative processes over decades.

Where (?):

• center's OR centers OR centers'
• artist's OR artists'

Understanding the Meaning

Let's start with the first sentence to get the full picture:

• 'The Textile Arts Center in Philadelphia'
  • We're talking about ONE specific center - notice "The" and the singular "Center"
• 'houses an extensive collection of contemporary fiber art'
  • This center contains a large collection of modern fiber art
• 'featuring works by 78 artists who pioneered innovative weaving techniques in the late 20th century'
  • The collection includes works by 78 artists (that's definitely plural - multiple artists)
  • These artists were innovators in weaving

Now the second sentence:

• 'Each piece is accompanied by detailed provenance information'
  • Every artwork comes with detailed information about its history and origin
• 'and photographs in the _____ document the evolution of their creative processes over decades'
  • This is where we have the blank. Let's look at the choices:
  • We need to decide: Is it one center or multiple centers?
  • We need to decide: Is it one artist's or multiple artists'?
  • The apostrophe placement matters for showing possession

To see what works here, let's understand what this phrase is telling us:

• 'photographs in the archive'
  • There are photographs stored in an archive
  • This archive belongs to... the center! (from sentence 1)
• 'document the evolution of their creative processes over decades'
  • These photographs show how creative processes evolved
  • Notice 'THEIR' - that's plural
  • This refers back to the 78 artists

So the complete picture is:

• The archive belongs to ONE center → we need singular possessive: "center's"
• The creative processes belong to MULTIPLE artists (78 of them) → we need plural possessive: "artists'"
• The word "their" confirms we're talking about multiple artists

What do we notice about the grammar here?

• For the center:
  • Sentence 1 clearly establishes ONE center: "The Textile Arts Center"
  • When one thing possesses something, we write: center's (singular possessive)
• For the artists:
  • Sentence 1 mentions "78 artists" (clearly plural)
  • When multiple things ending in 's' possess something, we write: artists' (apostrophe after the 's')
  • The pronoun "their" confirms this plural reference

So we need: center's archive document the artists'

The correct answer is Choice B.

GRAMMAR CONCEPT APPLIED

Forming Possessives: Singular vs. Plural

When showing that something belongs to someone or something, you need to match the possessive form to whether you have one or multiple owners:

For singular nouns (one thing/person):

• Add 's to the end
• The center's archive = the archive belonging to one center
• The artist's work = the work of one artist

For plural nouns ending in 's' (multiple things/people):

• Add only an apostrophe after the 's'
• The artists' works = the works of multiple artists
• The students' projects = the projects of multiple students

In this question:

• ONE center (we see "The Textile Arts Center") → center's ✓
• 78 artists (stated explicitly) + "their" (plural pronoun) → artists' ✓

Key strategy: Look for clues in the passage about whether you're dealing with one or many:

• Articles like "the" with a singular noun signal one
• Numbers (78 artists) clearly signal multiple
• Plural pronouns like "their" confirm multiple owners