During the covid-19 pandemic shutdowns, Pittsburgh Cultural Trust President and CEO Kevin McMahon frequently reassured colleagues that things would be OK.

“Even in the darkest days of the pandemic, I said, ‘We’re resilient; we’re gonna make it through this,’ ” he said. “Of course, there were moments when I got off the phone or the Zoom meeting, and I said, ‘Do I really believe what I’m saying?’ ”

Almost three years later, stage lights are back on, concerts are filling venues and museums have a rotating door of exhibits. It’s been a long climb back, but arts and cultural organization leaders say the pandemic has changed more than their bottom lines for a few years.

Many are rethinking business models, from ticket sales to memberships, while remaining hopeful that their pre-pandemic audiences return in full force.

Tickets and membership

“Tickets for the big, big shows are at, or slightly better than, pre-pandemic levels,” McMahon said. “In general, what I hear around the city and around the country is that we’re sort of at a plateau, where about 75% of our normal audiences are back.”

The blockbusters such as Broadway musicals and big-name rock concerts and comedy shows are selling out, he said. In October, 43,000 people attended “Frozen” during a two-week run at the Benedum Center.

“That’s 96% of tickets sold, and that’s among the best sell-through rates for the entire country,” McMahon said. “Compared to pre-pandemic, if a show got to 90%, it would be considered phenomenal.”

The real question for all organizations, he said, “isn’t any longer when will those remaining 20% of audiences come back, but will they ever come back? That’s the sobering message.”

Couple that with a change in how — and when — people are purchasing tickets, and the industry probably needs to rethink how to get people back in the seats going forward, said Kathryn Gigler, executive president of the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre.

“We might need to reconsider the subscription model that we’ve depended on for so many years,” she said. “Ideas like our flex pass, which offers greater flexibility to theater-goers, has been very popular for us, and I think it’s something we’ll need to expand on moving forward.

“We’re thinking about the different perks that we can bring to folks and being exceptionally creative in how we bring more value to folks who’ve been longtime subscribers and are maybe reconsidering that renewal.”

Ticket sales this year might be a predictor of the future for the Westmoreland Symphony, said Executive Director Natalie Kasievich.

“We are noticing that subscriptions are down, and we had kind of anticipated that,” she said. “In this environment, people just aren’t planning that far in advance. We’re hoping and anticipating that will balance out a little bit in the single-ticket sales. The subscriptions are great because we know what kind of income we’ll be working with for the season, but we don’t know what the climate will be like next month or next week or in February.”

Pittsburgh Cultural Trust Pittsburgh Cultural Trust’s spring Gallery Crawl took place April 22 in the Cultural District.  

Prime Stage Theatre, based at the New Hazlett Theater on Pittsburgh’s North Side, is seeing a similar issue.

“A lot of people aren’t pre-purchasing tickets,” said Tina Marie Cerny, Prime Stage’s managing director. “They’re waiting until the day of or day before. Our online sales are not as strong as they were. Most people are at-the-door purchasers. It’s much more wait-and-see. Our first production back last fall was tough. We still had the vaccination and testing restrictions and masking, and we had people who didn’t want to deal with that or were uncomfortable coming in.”

With each show, audiences got progressively larger, she said.

Getting the rest of the seats filled might just be a matter of time. It took people a couple of years to get out of the habit of going to the Cultural District for live shows, and it probably will take a couple of years to get them back in the habit, McMahon said.

Staging audience favorites was key to Greensburg Civic Theatre coming back strong in its 2021-22 season.

“Because of the shows we picked, three of our shows were almost complete sellouts,” said Margaret Ryan, a board member and past president of the Greensburg Civic Theatre. “Choosing ‘Rent’ was a bold step for us because that’s a much more challenging show than we have typically done, but it’s a show that people want to come out and see, so it went really well for us.”

The Carnegie Museums also are being strategic in raising funds and bringing people back.

In 2020, the museums were planning a 125th anniversary celebration.

“We couldn’t have an anniversary celebration, so we went to our donors and said, ‘What do you want us to do with the money you gave us for the anniversary?’” said Carnegie Museums President and CEO Steven Knapp. “They wanted us to find a constructive use for it rather than give it back. Instead of focusing on celebratory events, we said, let’s really put this money to work expanding our outreach and diversity of our audience.”

Kristina Serafini | Tribune-Review Visitors peruse the “Gatecrashers” exhibition Nov. 11 at the Westmoreland Museum of American Art in Greensburg.  

The result was a Community Access Membership program. It includes a free membership for ages 13-18, a $20 membership for families and individuals who qualify for public assistance, and a complimentary membership for eligible community-based nonprofits serving at-risk youth, foster youth, individuals experiencing homelessness and seniors receiving public assistance.

The push resulted in 70 nonprofits, 3,500 families and 12,500 teens taking advantage of the program, Knapp said.

“What’s really been encouraging about the teens is that the vast majority come from families that have never been members before,” Knapp said.

After losing 22% of total members during the first year of the pandemic, Carnegie Museums added more than 8,270 individuals and families to its member ranks in the past year, reaching an all-time high of 34,780 individual and family members.

That number doesn’t include the free teen memberships, Knapp noted.

Coming back

According to the Americans in the Arts report, as of April 2022, 77% of arts devotees already were attending or ready to attend in-person programs. That was up from 55% in January.

For the July-September 2022 quarter, The Westmoreland’s weekly average attendance was 70% of the pre-pandemic level, according to Claire Ertl, director of marketing and public relations.

Ticket sales for Pittsburgh Ballet’s Dec. 9-28 run of “The Nutcracker” are “tracking really well,” Gigler said.

But organizations are still figuring out how to bolster finances.

Kristina Serafini | Tribune-Review Pottery artist Tim Roth talks to visitors about his work during Holiday Mart 2022 on Nov. 11 at the Westmoreland Museum of American Art in Greensburg.  

“No question, we have not found a replacement for all of the ticket revenue that is lost,” McMahon said. “The percentage of support from fundraising is typically in the 15% range in our budget. In the coming year, it will be in the 25% range. We’ll add fundraising to offset other revenue losses.”

Some cost-cutting options could include offering fewer events and programs or shortening the runs of certain shows, he said.

“It’s hard to find a silver lining in a pandemic, but one of the things that has been most gratifying to me is that most people stuck with us,” McMahon said. “Donations continued to support the Cultural Trust. When we reopened the theaters and galleries, 50% (of audiences) came back immediately. That, to me, was very compelling and very gratifying.”

When the shutdown hit March 13, 2020, “we went from performing five days a week to zero,” said Derek Woods of Hempfield, front man of the Derek Woods Band. He also performs in the Woods Family Band with his father and brother and in Woods Rising with his wife, Sara.

“It was a scary time all across the music industry and in any type of creative job because there was no backup plan,” he said. “We had to figure out something quick and find different ways to make income.”

Woods also has seen an uptick in audiences for his Americana/rock band’s local shows and recent dates in North Carolina and California.

“People were worried and scared to go out to shows at first, but it’s finally starting to feel normal,” he said. “It almost feels better than before the pandemic because people are so excited to see live music again. They’re even spending money on merchandise.”

The Carnegie Museums’ membership campaign “caused a lot of attention to be paid to disparities in our communities and the question of how can we better partner with some of the smaller nonprofits,” Knapp said. “What can large institutions do to partner with the smaller institutions, particularly those in communities that don’t have the same wealth or other resources that some of our communities enjoy? It’s something we’ve always done, but has been intensified and given stronger focus as a result of what we learned from the pandemic.”

The importance of fundraising

To keep the lights on, many organizations relied on government relief programs and private donors to make up for revenue shortfalls during and after the shutdowns.

“One of the few bright spots throughout the shutdown is that our fundraising held up extremely well,” McMahon said. “We, like a lot of organizations, launched an emergency critical relief fund, and the community really responded. Close to an additional $3 million over and above our normal fundraising came in during that first year of the pandemic, which helped us tremendously.”

A canceled fundraiser actually kept the New Kensington Arts Center afloat through the shutdown, according to its president, Tommy West. The organization was a week away from hosting a major fundraiser when it had to cancel, but ticket buyers declined refunds.

Courtesy of Tommy West Community members participate in an adult painting class at the New Kensington Arts Center.  

“We had sold a good number of tickets for the gala dinner,” West said. “That good bit of money saved us and made it possible to pay our bills. The only reserve we had were the monies we had from tickets for that event. That carried us through until we were able to start up again. We’re just now starting to talk about having another fundraiser to repay all those folks who had purchased tickets.”

About five months before the shutdown, the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust had quietly started a $150 million capital campaign, McMahon said. During the pandemic, it was put on hold.

“In the spring, we started to revitalize it and change up some of the priorities,” he said.

At the Trust’s Sept. 7 Building on the Dream Gala, it was announced that about $140 million already has been committed to the campaign.

“We’re fairly confident we’ll be able to get to the $150 million in pledges by the end of December of this year,” McMahon said.

Pittsburgh Cultural Trust Attendees filled seats during the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust’s Lights On! Gallery Crawl on Sept. 10, 2021.  

The three-part focus of the campaign is to provide resources for ongoing operations and capital projects, look at future initiatives such as the Downtown Cineplex and grow the endowment.

“As we compare ourselves with other organizations of comparable size, we are very under-endowed and principally because we haven’t been around as long as, say, the Carnegie Museums or the symphony or some of the bigger universities,” McMahon said. “Our endowment is approximately $40 million. That’s a lot of money, of course, but an organization of our budget size, which, in normal years, is in the $80 million range, should have an endowment of a minimum of $250 million.”

During the shutdown, the Westmoreland Cultural Trust — which operates The Palace Theatre and Greensburg Garden & Civic Center — conducted membership and seat plaque campaigns, along with an online Keep the Arts Alive appeal. It also hosted a virtual version of its annual Party at the Palace fundraiser.

The Westmoreland Museum of American Art was closed from May through July 2020, then again from Dec. 12, 2020, to Feb. 7, 2021. It estimated a loss of 14,000 visitors.

Kristina Serafini | Tribune-Review Abby Hearne (left) and Ward Bryson, both of Athens, Ohio, and Maddi Butina of Greensburg view works in the “Gatecrashers” exhibition Nov. 11 at the Westmoreland Museum of American Art in Greensburg.  

Because admission is free, the Greensburg museum was not as affected by the loss of that revenue source as other museums, Ertl said. There were no staff layoffs or salary cuts.

“Our longtime supporters and loyal membership base responded with incredible generosity during the pandemic, making it possible to keep all of our staff on payroll and stabilizing revenue losses,” she said, declining to elaborate on donations.

For Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, “the last full season not impacted by covid was 2018-19,” Gigler said. “Because of generosity from donors and the savvy financial leadership that we have, we were able to remain in the black for 2020-21 and for 2021-22.”

One source of donor support was PBT’s $6 million Live Music Appeal, launched at the start of the organization’s 50th season in 2019 and fulfilled in June.

Pre-pandemic, in a “really healthy fiscal year,” Gigler said, PBT sought to operate on a revenue model of 50% contributed and 50% earned.

“Obviously during the pandemic, when we canceled the whole season, earned revenue was down and that pattern has continued, even during the full 2021-22 season, even with a full ‘Nutcracker’ run,” she said.

A ballet company’s holiday production of “The Nutcracker” typically is its biggest annual moneymaker, she noted.

PBT’s lower earned revenue was offset by “really incredible funding partners” and government sources, including about $4 million from the Shuttered Venues grant and Save Our Stages Act.

“Those government funding sources are not available in 2022, which means in terms of projected revenue, we really need to see a return to the more typical ratio of contributed-earned income,” Gigler said. “Unfortunately, we’re not seeing that so far.”

Still, the prospects of healthy returns — in the seats, on the stages and on the books — is better than a year ago, or a year before that.

“Over 15,000 tickets have been sold thus far for PBT’s (Dec. 9-28) production run of ‘The Nutcracker,’ meaning we are tracking 20% better than pre-COVID-19 ticket sales,” Gigler said. “Overall, we are at 57% of goal, meaning there is still some way to go, but we are hopeful that audiences will be eager to join us for this year’s show.”

“It took us several years to get into this dilemma, and it’s going to take us several more to get out of it,” McMahon said. “There’s light at the end of the tunnel, and (covid) is no longer an oncoming train.”

---

Copyright ©2025— Trib Total Media, LLC (TribLIVE.com)

---