McMahon credits a lot of this success to the citizens of Pittsburgh. “We offer it and they come. They come! All this wouldn’t work if we put out all these cultural offerings and then no one came. But they come! Two million a year, and growing.”

With obvious delight, McMahon told me of the Trust’s successful efforts to attract people to the art galleries in the District with its highly successful “Gallery Crawl”—a periodic event with festive street music, food, and drink—that attracts many thousands of people to simultaneous openings at the galleries. “It’s about experiencing the art,” McMahon says. “But it’s also about fun! It’s about experiencing community.”

This is a good place to note that, throughout our conversation, McMahon was eager to give all the credit for the cultural district's successes to others—mostly to Jack Heinz and the other founders of the Trust, as well as to Carol Brown, who preceded McMahon as president and CEO from 1986 until 2000. His humility is admirable but misleading. While the Trust surely benefited from early, strong leadership, McMahon has now been at the helm for 13 years, is a beloved figure in the community, and is widely hailed as an exceptionally able leader, who has steered the Trust with vision, energy, and skill (see here, here and here).

As our conversation turned to programming, McMahon shared his concerns about audience development. “We all know that people are getting more and more distracted. People are busier. Interests and tastes change. So, you have to worry: Who is going to be filling up all these seats in 10 years?!”

“The Broadway-musicals world is growing like gangbusters,” he says, “Those shows always sell out.” So, the Trust will continue to program those kinds of “popular, large-scale entertainments that can only be in the kind of large-scale venues we operate.”

But because McMahon wants the Trust to stay “in the forefront of both following and leading its audiences,” he is determined to continue to program things like a modern-dance series, which requires substantial underwriting. “We do it because it’s part of what we do—provide art that people can’t get elsewhere. We believe in providing a very balanced approach to our artistic programming, making sure that there’s something for everyone.” That mindset also leads to the PCT’s efforts to promote small, innovative theater companies like Bricolage Production Company and the Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company.

In short, Pittsburgh clearly has a winning formula for its cultural-arts scene and for using the arts as a spur to the city’s vitality. It’s all succeeding. But, as I noted near the start, there are elements to the Pittsburgh model—and keys to its success—that other cities cannot easily replicate.

By far the most important of these is what McMahon calls the "enabling" role of Pittsburgh’s legacy foundations—“our secret weapon”—that allows Pittsburgh to “be on a cultural par” with cities three or four times its size. With a wry smile, McMahon tells me, “We have a fair number of cities from around the world who come in here and ask how we do it. When I talk about the foundations, they get depressed.” The Heinz, Mellon, and Benedum philanthropies have made things possible for Pittsburgh that simply couldn’t happen elsewhere without that same infusion of financial resources.

With that in mind, I asked McMahon whether there are lessons other cities can take from the Pittsburgh experience. He noted that it’s possible to succeed without enormous resources. Expert advice and help are available from "various wonderful organizations." For an example, McMahon pointed to ArtPlace America and its “creative placemaking” program, which provides resources along with expertise in best practices.