Photo courtesy Anacostia Art Gallery.

Juanita Britton is the Queen Mother of the Konko Village in Ghana, the founder of her own public relations firm, BZB International, and a local business owner, a résumé befitting her nickname “Busy Bee.”

Since moving to the District of Columbia in 1982 to attend Howard University for graduate school, Britton has worked in some way with every president’s and mayor’s administration since Ronald Reagan and Walter Washington. “I think that makes me a Washingtonian now,” the Detroit native joked during a recent interview. She’s lived and worked internationally, started a Random Acts foundation after forgoing a large birthday party, and is helping grow the Konko Village, where kids are going to high school for the first time.

For the past two decades, she’s been a resident of Southeast D.C., east of the Anacostia River, where she operates a gallery and boutique. Britton will be honored with a community service award tomorrow by one of her current neighbors, the Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum, at its anniversary festival.

“Juanita has been a major goodwill ambassador for Anacostia and the other communities east of the Anacostia River,” Sharon Reinckens, deputy director of the museum, said. “As a businesswoman, she opened her doors to promote civic and cultural pride in this community and she has been a wonderful example of community-conscious entrepreneurship.”

“For the Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum to put me amongst all the things that it sees are important is to me the biggest honor ever,” Britton said. “Nothing can match it.”

But as Saturday will be marked by celebration, the coming months will be bittersweet: Britton will close the doors of the Anacostia Arts Gallery and Boutique at the end of October after nine years. The reason was simple: She could no longer afford to operate it at a loss.

Britton moved to the house that now serves as the gallery in 2003 and painted the exterior in a unique way, “which made a lot of guests come,” she said.

“Every Friday I gave a dinner party,” she said. “I took the bars off the front, so good energy could come in. And because it’s a crest on the top of hill, I just wanted it to be a beacon of light for a community that had not experienced a good image. In that age, it had a halo of bad things over it. It was my goal … [for] the house to be a ray of light on the top of the hill.”

The house at 2806 Bruce Place SE eventually became an art gallery that was seen also as a community center, which was not Britton’s original goal. “But that’s what it evolved to,” she said.

But for the past four or five years, the gallery and boutique was not operating at the level it needed to be. Now the African artifacts, jewelry, paintings, books — it all must go. A closing ceremony for the Kwame Nkrumah Ancestral Garden — named for the first president of Ghana — will be held this Sunday. Her long-running BZB Black Art and Gift show, however, will go on.

“It is a labor of love to operate a business in a neighborhood, in a community that is transitioning,” said Britton, who began her first business at age 10. “I couldn’t continue to write off the loss.”

Britton feared that future owners would take away the house’s personality and purpose. But part of the property will have a second life as part of the Rocketship charter school’s first D.C. campus. It’s a comfort to Britton to know part of the land will still house a “cultural center.” She’s even been invited to serve on the school’s community board.

Despite the gallery’s closure, Britton is staying put in Anacostia, which she moved to originally after seeing an opportunity to buy several homes and apartment buildings. As a longtime resident, she plans to continue sharing her “true understanding of what the community needs.”

It in some ways seems unfair that, as Anacostia’s art community seems to be finding a foothold, Britton’s gallery is closing. Britton said it was always difficult to get customers to come to her off-the-beaten path location, even after offering a shuttle from the Anacostia Metro station.

“Development is always slow,” she said of the neighborhood, adding that she hopes residents will not fear displacement to a fault. “People have to get involved in their own community. They have to go to the community meetings. They have to understand what’s happening. … You have to have a voice. You have to participate”

“I was never waiting for change. I was the change,” Britton said. “I know I’ve clearly made a difference, and I represent the change.”