Ottawa Art Gallery (OAG) has four valuable paintings that are up for sale to raise funds for the future building expansion. Four customers are bidding for the paintings. Customer 1 is willing to buy two paintings, but each other customer is willing to purchase at most one painting. The prices (in thousands) that each customer is willing to pay are given in the table below.
Bid for ($):
Painting 1 Painting 2 Painting 3 Painting 4

Customer 1 8 11 - -

Customer 2 9 13 12 7

Customer 3 9 - 11 -

Customer 4 - - 12 9

Note: “ - “ indicates that customer has not placed a bid for a painting OAG is interested in maximizing total revenue received from the sale of the paintings.

1. Formulate this problem as an assignment problem.

2. Use Excel Solver to solve the resulting LP (Include both formulation and answer report)

3. Describe clearly the optimal solution to this problem using a managerial statement to make a recommendation to the leadership of the OAG.