For nearly two decades, he has been a guiding force and ardent advocate for the arts and inclusion. His drive comes from his own experience as a dancer and choreographer before donning a corporate suit and tie that is more commonly associated with him as a representative of one of Pittsburgh’s oldest financial institutions.
Raised in Homewood and a proud member of the Westinghouse High School Wall of Fame, Oliver W. Byrd has been spreading the gospel of multicultural arts almost as long as he’s been breathing. Through his work behind the scenes, he has been a catalyst for the increased exposure of emerging and non-traditional artists of all ethnicities.
ATTENTION TO DETAIL—Oliver Byrd, center, reviews the progam booklet for MCAI’s 20th anniversary celebration with Charlet Holley and Demeatria Gibson Boccella.
The Point Breeze resident uses his Harvard and Pitt education, the business savvy he has accumulated in more than 30 years in corporate American along with his own affinity for the arts, which goes back to his childhood.
“I’ve always had a love of the arts and I participated from grade school through adulthood, says Byrd, who is a senior vice president of human resources of The Bank of New York Mellon Corp. The love continues, unabated, to this day.
These days, Byrd considers himself a “closet” artist (as a younger man, he was a dancer and choreographer), and has no problem admitting that these days he lives vicariously through the lives of the artists he supports through his work as the board chair of the Multicultural Arts Initiative.
MCAI is an outgrowth of The Pittsburgh Foundation, set up to specifically address diversity and inclusion in the region’s vibrant arts community. The onset of MCAI (initially a task force) was an interesting coincidence for Byrd.
After graduating from Westinghouse, he pursued his undergraduate degree at Harvard. “A great experience for me was leaving Pittsburgh and going to the Boston region and getting familiar with the National Center of African American Artists and wishing that we had something like that in Pittsburgh when I was growing up. When I came back, part of my plans was to do one of those in Pittsburgh.
“But then I met some of the local artists—Bob Johnson, Vernell Lillie, Rob Penny and people like that who were already doing things. And they had dreams and visions of what they could and wanted to do in this community and I thought rather than copy something from Boston and bring it to Pittsburgh, why don’t I work with the artists that are here to develop their ideas and their dreams.”
Byrd saw the need for a conduit, a vehicle to connect nontraditional and emerging artists and guide them to the next level.
“It became clear to me that what was needed besides more artists, performers and talent was people to work behind the scenes to help them to incorporate, get their financials together, marketing, structure kinds of things and I had a background in doing those kinds of things and I started doing that. When MCAI, the concept came along, it was a concept very much in keeping what I wanted to do anyway; it created an institutional framework for doing it.”
Since its inception in 1988, MCAI has proven to be a valuable resource to southwest Pennsylvania. “Initially, the funding was pretty small, $250K—that was 1989, 1990 or so, and we’ve been able to grow to something closer to a $1 million per year,” says Byrd.
To dat, MCAI has awarded more than 600 grants totaling nearly $7 million. A third of that total has provided operating support for Black arts organizations and artists.
And artists, being creative people, by and large find it difficult to grasp the nuts and bolts, and are intimidated by the structure needed to develop a fundable proposal. MCAI provides the technical expertise to turn a concept into a tangible proposal request that can, ultimately, result in a grant that turns a dream into reality.
But Byrd, who relishes being the man behind the curtain, sees the need to pass on the baton. “I’ve enjoyed making others’ dreams a reality, and the time has come for someone else to share that joy.”