The Voice of America Studio tour offers a firsthand look at VOA’s live news and information programming available to an international audience in more than 40 languages on multiple platforms, including television, radio, and the internet.
VOA’s News Center serves as the agency’s 24/7 news hub, supplying 45 language services with the lifeblood of their programming, while offering a renown roster of programming of its own, including weekly television programs such as “Plugged In with Greta Van Susteren” and “VOA Connect,” top of the hour radio newscasts broadcasting fresh information round the clock, and award winning documentaries.
Once home to the Social Security Administration, the Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building represents the government's sweeping endeavor to house agencies expanded or created under the New Deal. The interior is typical of the Art Deco style, such as the streamlined curves of the escalators; horizontal banks of Greek key motifs on polished bronze elevator doors; and bulletin boards, directories, and mailboxes with angular Art Deco lettering.
The Section of Fine Arts, a New Deal art program, commissioned exterior sculptures and interior murals. For the spaces over the four central entrances, artists Emma Lou Davis and Henry Kreis each created two granite bas relief panels with social security themes. On the interior, scenes of American life and family are represented in murals by Seymour Fogel, Philip Guston, Ethel and Jenne Magafan, and Ben Shahn.
General Information
- Please have your picture IDs available for this tour.
- Visitors should arrive 10 minutes early to go through security screening.
- Meet your Smithsonian Associates Rep by the Information Desk inside the C Street, S.W., entrance no later than listed start time.
- While there is street parking in the area, it is very limited, your best bet is using METRO. But parking can sometimes be found around the National Mall and along the metered portions of Independence Ave, and Maryland Ave, SW.
