The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is stopping free public tours of the center, which had been a mainstay of the cultural institution for more than five decades, according to an internal memo.
In a memo viewed by the The New York Times, Brooks Boeke, the director of the volunteer program, said the center was putting a “temporary pause” on the tour program, effective Friday. Volunteers serve in a variety of roles at the Kennedy Center, but only tour guides were mentioned, instructed to stop reporting for duty “until further notice.”
The memo did not provide a reason for halting the tour program; it has operated continuously since the center’s opening in 1971, except for a one-year hiatus during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The ending of the tours comes after a volunteer tour guide was featured in a New York Times article detailing President Trump’s gutting of the iconic cultural institution. Before the memo was circulated on Thursday, three volunteers had expressed worries to a reporter that the Kennedy Center would target the tour program in retribution.
Ms. Boeke sent the memo to the full volunteer corps. She copied the Kennedy Center’s director Matt Floca; Karles Jackson, the center’s director of security; and two volunteer program managers. None of them responded to emailed requests for comment.
Reached by phone, Ms. Boeke asked, “How did you find out?” before declining to give further comment.
“We are conducting a review of campuswide tour routes to ensure they provide the best possible experience for our visitors,” a Kennedy Center spokesman, P.J. Elliott, said in an emailed statement.
Sandy Weiswasser, 87, a retired teacher and volunteer who has been guiding visitors through the center for 18 years, was profiled in a Times article on the center, published on Monday. “This place used to be really thriving and busy and crowded,” Ms. Weiswasser was quoted as saying. “Now it’s a black hole.” Reached on Thursday, she declined to comment.
Last year, Mr. Trump removed the Kennedy Center’s leadership, cut its programming and installed a handpicked board that had his name drilled into the building front. A court ordered the name removed last month. Audiences, performers and visitors have fled from the center, which has lost about 90 percent of its staff and, for now, 100 percent of its paying audience.
The president has said he is seeking to reinvigorate the center, which he has portrayed as languishing under previous administrations and policies promoting diversity.
Next month, the Kennedy Center board is expected to decide whether to close the center for a two-year renovation, as Mr. Trump wants. Ms. Weiswasser and a few dozen other volunteer guides had continued to show up, out of love for the institution that they say has elevated life for them and millions of visitors.
Ms. Weiswasser had once been among 140 volunteer guides who gave tours in 10 languages to up to 400,000 people a year. Last week on her Monday shift, only five of more than a dozen tour guides showed up.
