The National Park Service has started a two-year renovation project at the Thomas Jefferson Memorial, aiming to improve accessibility and expand exhibits to showcase the third president’s “multi-faceted” story.

The project focuses on the memorial’s lower-level — a 2,500-square-foot exhibit space that some visitors might not even know exists. First installed in 1994 (and not upgraded since), the space is dark and cramped.

Starting in December, the entire lower-level will undergo a complete renovation, adding new exhibits that have both tactile and audio elements accessible to all visitors. (The chamber and the memorial statue will remain open over the course of the renovation project, according to the National Park Service, while the ground-floor space will close.)

“The expanded and reimagined exhibit space will include completely new state-of-the-art exhibit, providing more perspectives at it shares Thomas Jefferson’s multi-faceted story,” reads the NPS release. Spokesperson Mike Litterst did not immediately respond to DCist/WAMU’s request for more detail about the new exhibits.

Other planned accessibility upgrades to the memorial include adding pathways on the east and west front of the steps leading up to the chamber, and a modernization of the elevator that takes visitors from the lower level to the chamber area. The Park Service will also be fixing damaged pavement near the memorial, redoing the lower-level bathroom and retail space, and upgrading security systems as a part of the project.

Funding for the renovation comes from local billionaire David Rubenstein. In 2019, Rubenstein (who has previously made philanthropic gifts to the Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, and Arlington National Cemetery, among other D.C.-based landmarks), pledged $10 million to upgrading the Jefferson Memorial’s underground museum space.

“While Thomas Jefferson is not without some things that we can question today, clearly he did some great things for our country, including being the author of the Declaration of Independence, creating the University of Virginia, and as president, he bought the land that we call the Louisiana Purchase, which doubled the size of our country,” Rubenstein said at the time of his donation.

The renovations are set to be complete by 2023. The exhibit-space renovation is separate from the renovation project that just wrapped at the memorial this past September, which replaced the three roofs of the memorial and scrubbed off that black “biofilm” coating the memorial’s marble exterior.