Newton’s Jackson Homestead and Museum, also known as the Newton History Museum, reopened recently with a state-of-the-art exhibit on the entirety of the city’s history after over six months of substantial renovations.

“What we have happening… is a brand new exhibit—a really elaborate, cutting-edge exhibit that will take up the entire first floor of the museum,” said Lisa Dady, the executive director of Historic Newton. “We’re really excited about showcasing and unveiling the new exhibit here at Jackson Homestead.”

Jackson Homestead was built in 1809 by the Jackson family, a family of English colonists, before being donated by the family to the city to become a history museum in 1949, according to the Historic Newton website.

The Homestead’s new exhibit, called “Newton: The City We Make,” comes after a renovation of the entire first floor. It will be divided into three themes of Newton history, each with distinct names: “On This Land,” “Making Newton Home” and “Creating Change.”

“There’s three themes,” Dady said. “‘On This Land’ talks about the cultural geography and cultural landscape of Newton over time, well over 400 years. Then we talk about ‘Making Newton Home,’ and that is how a place becomes a home. It’s about how people build community … Then another gallery is called ‘Creating Change,’ and it talks about all the different ways in which people may change, and that can be anything from running to be governor of Massachusetts or doing a sit-in in the South.”

The new exhibit also has ways for people to dive deeper into Newton’s history, explained Dady.

“We can’t tell all the history in 1,000 square feet, but we’ve picked out some major things that we think represent some of the high points,” Dady said. “And then we have opportunities for people to go deeper with QR codes to online exhibits or videos. It’s a highly interactive exhibit. It’s [made] to appeal to people of all ages.”

The exhibit is set to replace an old Newton history exhibit that didn’t encapsulate the city’s full history, according to Dady.

“We had a Newton history exhibit that was quite old, and it was very much focused on the 1800s,” Dady said. “It was focused on farmers and firefighters and white folks. And it was pretty narrow when you think about the sheer array of the demographics of Newton as it is today.”

Historic Newton hopes that everyone will be able to see themselves in an exhibit that’s much more diverse and tells a wider array of stories when compared to the old one.

“The stories are much more diverse, both in terms of the people that we’re talking about, but also we have brought the stories into the 20th and even 21st centuries, and I’m incredibly excited about some of the artifacts we have and how some of the stories we tell are in people’s lived memory,” Dady said.

Dady said that the renovations and the construction of the exhibit has been in the works for years.

“I’ve been here for 11 years, and that whole time, we knew that we wanted to trade out the exhibit that we had in the basement because it was old and it was time for a new one,” Dady said. “We also knew that we needed to renovate the basement. So we’ve had the goal for a long time. We have been working on it … for four years.”

With the museum being closed for the last six months, Newton has been gearing up to welcome the exhibit at the museum’s reopening on Sunday, March 1.

“Newton is a city of thousands of stories, and we are all its stewards,” Newton Mayor Marc Laredo said in a statement. “We move through the same moments in history, even as we experience them differently. This new exhibit, ‘Newton: The City We Make,’ helps us see how those varied perspectives form a shared civic story of our city.”