The Anacostia Community Museum will shut down on March 15 for seven months of renovations. Museum staff gave visitors less than three weeks notice of the closure.

The $3.5 million renovation project will focus on improving the museum’s accessibility and upgrading its parking lot and outdoor space, according to a Smithsonian press release dated Feb. 26. Exterior updates will include the addition of a “multi-functional plaza” and a community garden. The building will also undergo interior lighting and HVAC updates while it’s closed to the public.

The construction will require the closure of sidewalks and driveways, making building access difficult.

“Because of the shutdown, plans were up in the air,” said museum spokesperson Marcia Baird Burris about the short timeframe between the announcement and the closure. All Smithsonian museums were closed for most of January due to the partial federal government shutdown.

“With this renovation, the Smithsonian is investing not only in the infrastructure of the Anacostia Community Museum, but also in its external accessibility and overall appeal,” said Lisa Sasaki, interim director of the museum, in the release.

The museum’s main exhibition, “A Right to the City,” explores gentrification in six D.C. neighborhoods: Adams Morgan, Anacostia, Brookland, Chinatown, Shaw, and Southwest. During the closure, the exhibition will be broken up into six “satellite versions” and put on view in corresponding neighborhoods.

Five of the six mini-exhibits will open March 15 at D.C. Public Library branches in Mt. Pleasant, Anacostia, Woodridge, Shaw, and Southwest. The museum hasn’t confirmed plans for the location of the Chinatown exhibit yet.

The full exhibition will go back on display when the museum reopens. It will stay on view through April 2020.

The Anacostia Community Museum celebrated its 50^th anniversary last year. It is one of the least-visited Smithsonian institutions in D.C. — last year it hosted 33,709 visitors. The most-visited Smithsonian, the Air and Space Museum on the National Mall, had 6.2 million visitors, while the least-visited, the Arts and Industries Building, hosted 19,341.

This story originally appeared on WAMU.