Though usually only focused on the city of Renton and its history, the Renton Historical Museum is branching out this summer with a new exhibit called “Defining Spaces.”

Drawn from the city’s art collection by guest curator Colleen Lenahan, it is the museum’s first art exhibit, as opposed to a solely history-based exhibit, according to Museum Director Liz Stewart.

“This is much more about a sense of place,” she said earlier this month.

The exhibit’s theme, “Picturing the places that shape us,” came together as Lenahan was looking through the city’s collection as she worked toward her Museology degree at the University of Washington.

Lenahan said she wanted to find something for her thesis that would appeal to a broad audience.

“Because it’s a history museum, this audience is not necessarily going to this museum to see art,” she said, adding that she wanted it to “resonate and connect” with the patrons.

So instead of a style or artist, Lenahan chose place as her theme after seeing trends in the city’s art collection.

“As humans, we attach meanings to place that are deeply personal and stick with us throughout our lives,” she said.

Lenahan split the exhibit into three sections: Indoor spaces, outdoor spaces and abstract spaces.

The third, she said, stretched the concept a little and allowed for a wider range of art to be placed in the museum.

In the exterior, or “Great Outdoors” section, there are paintings as well as a photograph of the Narco Brick Factory, a real place located in California, or a dune grass painting that Lenahan said was among her favorites.

In “The World Within” the spaces move indoors to locations like a kitchen in “How to Bake a Cake From Scratch,” which is Stewart’s favorite for its bright colors and composition. Another inside space shows a living room with two people silhouetted by the television while a painting of a deer in headlights hangs behind them.

In the abstract section, the spaces are “not necessarily real places,” according to Stewart.

The exhibit ends with the museum’s “Wells Ave. Looking North in 1911” mural. While it is usually visible in the museum, for the current exhibit it is given a sense of prominence as the closer, a real space here in the city that folks can connect with.

But the exhibit’s “signature piece,” according to Stewart, is Park Sense III, an impressionistic painting in outdoor section.

“This painting really encapsulates that sense of being out in the trees and on the grass,” she said.

At the end there is also a feedback wall for patrons to tell the museum what they think.

“Art really is all about starting a conversation,” Lenahan said.

Stewart said the idea is to try and connect people better with the world around them and with Renton as a place and she is hoping the exhibit appeals to a large audience, especially those who would not normally visit the history museum.

Lenahan also hopes the exhibit moves people.

“Art is just a way to think about things differently,” she said. “We always see the world through our own eyes but through art we can see in different ways.”

The exhibit runs through Aug. 31.

Reach Editor Brian Beckley at 425-255-3484, ext. 5050.