One and The Same

When I had began to think about how I would tie something I really enjoy (The Rochester Public Market) into my thesis, my intial point of connection was diverse visitorship within the local community. While that hasn't changed in the broad sense, my the visitor/ audience that I thought that RPM was a place for mostly disadvantaged or marginalized peoples, and thus my paper would focus on how the RPM cultivated diverse visitorship purely through interacting with the large part of the population that's looked down upon. I had thought it was revolutionary, how much the Rochester apublic Market dedicated to serving those who wouldn't always be able to return the favor. I had seen museums as institutions that had constantly failed in promoting local audience participation and RPM as this champion of public servitude (to be fair, this is only my second semester in this major and I have yet to take a fair amount of the muse classes). Through my classes and research this semester on both Museum and marketplace methodologies on visitorship, I have found a lot of overlap in terms of   structured engagement planning.

Furthermore, I have learned that the market is not just a place for the marginalized or disadvantaged; many well-educated, financially stable, and mentally sound people see the market as a breeding ground for entrepreneurial spirits; which caused my first shift in my lens of focus for my thesis plans. Others go to the market because the informal communal nature of it all reminds the visitor of 'the good old days' or 'true-American values' (real or actualized); thus markets can carry on aura of historical and cultural importantance, promoting popularity, uniqueness. and visitorship. All of those aforementioned things listed are realizations that museums already have or attempt to act/ capitulize on, to varying degrees of success. I'm excited now that I have found the true reach of public market audiences and the overlap between museums and markets, as I feel that before my insight would have come across as one dimensional.

 I feel like museums and marketplaces have similar lists but different priorities when it comes to engaging large and diverse visitorship. Identifying the specific ties an institution has to its self as an organization and the ties it has to the audience as public servants are thoughts that have been on my mind recently as part of the realization of professional similarities between the two. Subsequently identifying which ties are stronger and why/ to what end? What is the successful combination of low barrier/accessibility and structured authority that will result in a diverse audience that conducts themselves in appropriate manners?