National Museums Liverpool, formerly National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside, comprises several museums and art galleries in and around Liverpool in Merseyside, England. All the museums and galleries in the group have free admission. The museum is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and an exempt charity under English law. [1]
Until 1974 the institutions were under the auspices of the former Liverpool Corporation. The reorganisation of English local government that year resulted in the newly created Merseyside Metropolitan County Council assuming custodianship by mutual agreement with the city authority. In 1978 the Charity Commission transferred to the County Council the trusteeship of the then privately operated Lady Lever Art Gallery and its collection. [2] The Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher subsequently resolved to abolish the Metropolitan Counties and reassign many of their assets to the lower tier City and Borough Councils. In the 1980s, local politics in Liverpool was under the control of the Militant group of the Labour Party. In the lead-up to the county’s abolition, and anticipating their takeover, Liverpool's Militant councillors discussed selling off the world class collections of the Walker Art Gallery to fund social housing in the city. Following a parliamentary select committee report in 1984, and pressure from influential interests, the government was persuaded to assume funding responsibility and to create a new national museum to take over the governance of the group along the lines of the existing trustee museums in London. Thus all of Liverpool's museums were nationalised under the Merseyside Museums and Galleries Order 1986 which created a new national trustee body called National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside. [3] The Trustees changed its operating title to National Museums Liverpool in 2003 but its legal title remains National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside.
It holds in trust multi-disciplinary collections of worldwide origin made up of more than one million objects and works of art. The organisation holds courses, lectures, activities and events and provides educational workshops and activities for school children, young people and adults. Its venues are open to the public six days a week, from Tuesday to Sunday, providing both free and ticketed exhibitions. National Museums Liverpool has charitable status and is England's only national museums group based entirely outside London. It currently comprises eight different venues, one of which is outside Liverpool itself — the Lady Lever Art Gallery, located in Port Sunlight.
Museum | Year Established | Status | Specialities | Image |
---|---|---|---|---|
World Museum | 1851 | Open | Ancient History, archaeology, ethnology, natural history, space and time, science | |
Walker Art Gallery | 1877 | Open | Art: Painting, sculpture and craft | |
Merseyside Maritime Museum | 1980 | Open | Immigration, Maritime history | |
The Piermaster's House | 1983 | Closed (2023) | Wartime | |
Border Force National Museum | 1994 | Open | The Border Force National Museum (Known as:Seized! The Border and Customs uncovered), highlighting the work of the HM Revenue & Customs and the UK Border Agency, covering smuggling, crime and the history of tax. Located in the basement gallery of Merseyside Maritime Museum since May 2008. | |
International Slavery Museum | 2007 | Open, Phase 2 under development | Historical and contemporary aspects of slavery | |
Lady Lever Art Gallery | 1922 | Open | Art: paintings, sculpture and furniture | |
Sudley House | 1944 [4] | Open | Art, fashion | |
Museum of Liverpool | 2011 | Open | Liverpool's social and cultural history. The museum follows the Museum of Liverpool Life, open 1993–2006 | |
National Conservation Centre | 1996 | Closed | Art, conservation science and technology. Closed to the public 17 December 2010. Conservation work continues behind the scenes. |
Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
Tate Liverpool is an art gallery and museum in Liverpool, Merseyside, England, and part of Tate, along with Tate St Ives, Cornwall, Tate Britain, London, and Tate Modern, London. The museum was an initiative of the Merseyside Development Corporation. Tate Liverpool was created to display work from the Tate Collection which comprises the national collection of British art from the year 1500 to the present day, and international modern art. The gallery also has a programme of temporary exhibitions. Until 2003, Tate Liverpool was the largest gallery of modern and contemporary art in the UK outside London.
Merseyside is a ceremonial and metropolitan county in North West England. It borders Lancashire to the north, Greater Manchester to the east, Cheshire to the south, the Welsh county of Flintshire across the Dee Estuary to the southwest, and the Irish Sea to the west. The largest settlement is the city of Liverpool.
Liverpool City Council is the local authority for the city of Liverpool in Merseyside, England. Liverpool has had a local authority since 1207, which has been reformed on numerous occasions. Since 1974 the council has been a metropolitan borough council. It provides the majority of local government services in the city. The council has been a member of the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority since 2014.
The Walker Art Gallery is an art gallery in Liverpool, which houses one of the largest art collections in England outside London. It is part of the National Museums Liverpool group.
The National Portrait Gallery (NPG) is an art gallery in London that houses a collection of portraits of historically important and famous British people. When it opened in 1856, it was arguably the first national public gallery in the world that was dedicated to portraits.
World Museum is a large museum in Liverpool, England which has extensive collections covering archaeology, ethnology and the natural and physical sciences. Special attractions include the Natural History Centre and a planetarium. Entry to the museum is free. The museum is part of National Museums Liverpool.
The Lady Lever Art Gallery is a museum founded and built by the industrialist and philanthropist William Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme and opened in 1922. The Lady Lever Art Gallery is set in the garden village of Port Sunlight, on the Wirral and one of the National Museums Liverpool.
Merseytravel is the passenger transport executive, responsible for the coordination of public transport in the Liverpool City Region in North West England. Merseytravel was established on 1 December 1969 as the Merseyside Passenger Transport Executive. From 1 April 2014, with the creation of the Liverpool City Region, Merseytravel expanded its area of operation from the metropolitan county of Merseyside to also include the Borough of Halton.
Ince Blundell is a village and civil parish in the Metropolitan Borough of Sefton in the ceremonial county of Merseyside and historic county of Lancashire, England. It is situated to the north of Liverpool on the A565 road and to the east of the village of Hightown. There are two associated hamlets of Lady Green and Carr Houses.
The County Sessions House is a former courthouse in Liverpool, Merseyside, England. It stands at the top of William Brown Street. It is adjacent to the Walker Art Gallery, the Steble Fountain and Wellington's Column. It now provides office and storage space for the gallery. The Session House is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade II* listed building.
The Stuckists Punk Victorian was the first national gallery exhibition of Stuckist art. It was held at the Walker Art Gallery and Lady Lever Art Gallery in Liverpool from 18 September 2004 to 20 February 2005 and was part of the 2004 Liverpool Biennial.
Rivington is a village and civil parish of the Borough of Chorley, Lancashire, England, occupying 2,538 acres. It is about 6 miles (9.7 km) southeast of Chorley and about 8+1⁄2 miles (13.7 km) northwest of Bolton. Rivington is a rural area consisting primarily of agricultural grazing land, moorland, with hill summits including Rivington Pike and Winter Hill within the West Pennine Moors. The area has a thriving tourist industry centred around reservoirs created to serve Liverpool in the Victorian era and Lever Park created as a public park by William Lever at the turn of the 20th century, with two converted barns, a replica of Liverpool Castle and open countryside. Rivington and Blackrod High School is located here. Rivington and its village had a population of 109 at the 2011 Census.
Gloria Dorothy Hooper, Baroness Hooper, is a British lawyer and a Conservative life peer in the House of Lords.
There are a number of national museums in the United Kingdom, which are owned and operated by the state. The national museums of the UK are funded by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) of the British government, and are all located in England. There are 14 national museums, all established by Acts of Parliament, as well as another eight which are sponsored by the DCMS.
Sponsa de Libano is a painting by the Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones dated 1891.
York Museums Trust (YMT) is the charity responsible for operating some key museums and galleries in York, England. The trust was founded in 2002 to run York's museums on behalf of the City of York Council. It has seen an increase in annual footfall of 254,000 to the venues since its foundation. In both 2016 and 2017, it saw its annual visitors numbers reach 500,000 people.
The Leverhulme Memorial stands to the west of the Lady Lever Art Gallery on the junction of Windy Bank and Queen Mary's Drive, Port Sunlight, Wirral, Merseyside, England. It commemorates the life of William Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme, the businessman who created the factory and model village of Port Sunlight. The memorial was designed by James Lomax-Simpson, and the sculptor was William Reid Dick. It consists of an obelisk with a figure on the top, with a separate group of four figures beside it. The memorial was unveiled in 1930. It is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade II listed building.
Terraced Gardens of Rivington is a landscaped woodland on the hillside of Rivington Pike, in Rivington Parish in the Chorley Borough of Lancashire, England, originally designed as a Garden by T.H. Mawson and built as curtilage to a home of the soap magnate Viscount Leverhulme; as such, the area is not part of Lever Park. The gardens contains and abuts the SSSI of the West Pennine Moors. Today the former gardens are Grade II listed and contain eleven Grade II structures. The original design had three elements — the upper part being in the romanesque architectural style, the lower section, known as the Ravine, was a woodland with a man-made stream, and a Japanese-style garden, with a man-made pond constructed of Pulmonite which remains today. The gardens are leased to Rivington Heritage Trust by United Utilities and are undergoing restoration and preservation.