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J. Kevin McMahon, president and CEO of the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, inside the trust office in December 2016.
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Kevin McMahon to retire as head of Pittsburgh Cultural Trust after 20 years

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Kevin McMahon to retire as head of Pittsburgh Cultural Trust after 20 years

After 20 years as president and CEO of the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, J. Kevin McMahon is ready to just sit back and enjoy the show.

But not just yet.

McMahon, 70, made his retirement official Wednesday, announcing that he will leave in January. He agreed to a five-year contract in 2016 and was to retire in 2021. But then came the pandemic and an unprecedented shutdown of the performing arts nationwide. 

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Now, with live events returning throughout Downtown’s Cultural District, McMahon’s retirement date is set. It was only after he booked a Florida vacation for next year that his wife, Kristen, said, “Oh, this is really happening.”

A national search led by the trust’s board of trustees and chaired by David Holmberg, president and CEO of Highmark Health, is under way to find McMahon’s replacement.

Until the early 2020 shutdowns that began a two-year span with no live performances, festivals or gallery openings, the Cultural Trust had never incurred an annual operating deficit. McMahon had helped raise more than $400 million and grew the trust’s annual budget from $20 million to $85 million, placing it within the top five performing arts centers in the United States before the pandemic.

In addition to Broadway in Pittsburgh series shows like “Disney’s The Lion King” and “Hamilton,” the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust controls much of the real estate in the 14-block Cultural District and oversees umbrella services for companies that fill buildings along Liberty Avenue.

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Among McMahon’s goals in his remaining months is to complete a $150 million capital campaign that has already topped $100 million. The money will go toward operations, programs and projects such as renovating the Benedum Center marquee and Greer Cabaret sound system. It will also improve what McMahon said is an underserved endowment compared to those of venerable Pittsburgh arts organizations such as the Carnegie Museums and Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.

“At 38 years, we’re still in our infancy,” he said of the trust, which was established in 1984 with a mission to rejuvenate a Downtown corridor that had been known as a seedy, red-light district.

McMahon in bootsKevin McMahon tries on Billy Porter's boots during the 2016 production of "Kinky Boots" at the Benedum Center in Downtown.(Pittsburgh Cultural Trust)

‘Unprecedented growth’

McMahon’s predecessor, Carol R. Brown, took on the task of building a Pittsburgh Cultural District with new and restored theaters and art galleries in an environment that would entice people not only to visit, but to live Downtown.

“While I am sad to bid Kevin farewell, I am also incredibly grateful for how far the Cultural Trust has come under his direction,” Brown said in a statement. “His commitment to the organization and the ongoing development of the Cultural District has been unwavering.”

The Cultural Trust board of directors lauded McMahon for “two decades of unprecedented growth.”

“Kevin’s stable financial management, commitment to high quality cultural experiences and providing access to the arts for everyone, along with a collaborative spirit, has helped us to accomplish significant goals at a faster pace than many thought was possible,” said James Rohr, former chairman of PNC Financial Services Group and past Cultural Trust board chairman.

Surprise hire

Rohr and Brown were the community leaders most responsible for bringing McMahon to Pittsburgh. He arrived in 2001 after eight years as executive vice president at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. 

His hire was kept tightly under wraps until the announcement. Sitting in the conference room where Rohr introduced him to Pittsburgh’s arts leaders, McMahon recalled the reaction of Stephen Klein, a friend from D.C. who was then Pittsburgh Public Theater’s managing director.

“Steve came over and gave me a hug, and I remember he turned to everyone and gave a thumb’s up, like, ‘You did good in hiring this guy.’ That felt pretty good,” McMahon said.

He leaves a job whose salary has topped $700,000 at times. He took a significant pay cut, as did all the top trust executives, while many workers were laid off during the pandemic. McMahon said his executive team has remained intact, but there are many jobs still to be filled. 

“A normal, full-time component [of jobs] is about 125-130 people,” he said on Monday. “I don't even think we're at 100 right now. We have close to, in round numbers, 500 hourly part-time folks, including the stage technicians and all the front of house people. Then we have [as many as] 700 regular volunteers – the ushers, the people that are helping with festivals, and things like that.”

On his first day on the job in 2001, McMahon noticed that the faces around the meeting room “all looked like me” – meaning white males. The current senior management of the Cultural Trust is 40% people of color, he said, “which is I think the highest of the major arts organizations in the region. It's been very deliberate.

“When we have senior management meetings around this table, it definitely is a diverse experience. And that's the answer, having people around the table that come from different perspectives and, ultimately, the decisions that are made are better for the organization and for the community. That's something that we've worked really hard on.”

McMahon and wifeKevin McMahon and his wife, Kristen, at the annual Cultural Trust Gala at the Renaissance Pittsburgh Hotel in Downtown in 2019. She didn't believe he was retiring until he booked a Florida vacation next year.(Post-Gazette)

Downtown ghost town

Presiding over the rebound from the pandemic will be a big part of McMahon’s legacy.

In 2017, the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council reported that the arts’ impact as “the economic engine for Allegheny County” – generating jobs, household income and tax revenues – was $2.38 billion in direct and indirect spending.

The pandemic, of course, changed all that. McMahon recalled the gallows humor of those awful days when the usually bustling Cultural District was like a ghost town. Penn Avenue restaurant owners pleaded with the president and CEO of the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust.

“They were complaining, ‘Kevin, let's get going again. We’re dying over here.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I appreciate that, but at least you guys have takeout. We don't even have takeout. We’re closed.’"

This week, the opening of  “Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of The Temptations” marked the final show of a complete, in-person Broadway in Pittsburgh season that started in October 2021. McMahon was heartened by recent crowds for the EQT Children’s Theater Festival and people in seats for the return of “Hamilton” and premieres such as “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

He can be seen at most opening nights of touring shows, roaming the aisles before the curtain goes up, greeting friends, donors and supporters — usually one in the same.

When he arrived in 2001, McMahon was just getting to know the town where he was born. His family moved to Connecticut when he was a toddler. However, he visited Pittsburgh often enough to know what Isaly’s was and attended a Pirates game at Forbes Field with his grandfather.

He learned quickly, and it is here he will stay. He and his wife live in West Deer, about 20 miles from Downtown.

While McMahon is leaving his job as an arts administrator, he will continue his long career in higher education as an adjunct professor for the Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University.

This son of a piano teacher never was able to master the instrument, but it gave him a great appreciation for the mastery of the many artists he has encountered.

“If anything, struggling to learn how to play the piano all those years, when I see someone sit down at a keyboard, I just, I’m in awe.”

duckCrowds gather on a Sunday night in October 2013 to see the 40-foot-tall Yellow Duck that came here as part of the Festival of Firsts, one of Kevin McMahon's proudest achievements as president and CEO of the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust.(Julia Rendleman/Post-Gazette)

Duck on the river

McMahon is proud of the many programs and festivals he helped start, including First Night. But he is proudest of the 40-root rubber duck that pulled up along the Allegheny River in 2013.

Thousands of people lined the banks of the North Shore to catch a glimpse of the inflated yellow duck, the brainchild of Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman and the biggest hit at the Pittsburgh International Festival of Firsts, launched by McMahon. That festival and others focused on bringing in artists from around the world were part of the philosophy that the Cultural Trust has “something for everyone.”

“To this day, the incredible response from the entire community to the Festival of Firsts, where we had that big yellow duck, that showed me that if you meet people where they are, everyone actually can have an arts experience. It was something as simple and yet as beautiful as that.

“Seeing the reaction that night to that silly duck floating up the river … even to this day, I still kind of get chills thinking about how something like that could bring this community, all walks of life, together. And we did that.”

Sharon Eberson (mustseepittsburgh@gmail.com) is a former Post-Gazette Arts & Entertainment editor and theater critic.

First Published: May 18, 2022, 2:00 p.m.
Updated: May 18, 2022, 2:00 p.m.

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J. Kevin McMahon, president and CEO of the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, inside the trust office in December 2016.  (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
J. Kevin McMahon tries on shoes from "Kinky Boots" at the Benedum Center in Downtown in 2016.  (Pittsburgh Cultural Trust)
Kevin McMahon and his wife, Kristen, at the annual Cultural Trust Gala at the Renaissance Pittsburgh Hotel in Downtown in 2019. She didn't believe he was retiring until he booked a Florida vacation next year.  (Post-Gazette)
Crowds gather on a Sunday night in October 2013 to see the 40-foot-tall Yellow Duck that came here as part of the Festival of Firsts, one of Kevin McMahon's proudest achievements as president and CEO of the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust.  (Julia Rendleman/Post-Gazette)
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