National Museums Liverpool, formerly National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside, comprises several museums and art galleries in and around

Liverpool Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a popul ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. All the museums and galleries in the group have free admission. The museum is a

non-departmental public body In the United Kingdom, non-departmental public body (NDPB) is a classification applied by the Cabinet Office, Treasury, the Scottish Government and the Northern Ireland Executive to public sector organisations that have a role in the process of n ...

sponsored by the

Department for Culture, Media and Sport , type = Department , logo = Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport logo.svg , logo_width = , logo_caption = , seal = , seal_width = , seal_caption = , picture = Gove ...

and an

exempt charity An exempt charity is an institution established in England and Wales for charitable purposes which is exempt from registration with, and oversight by, the Charity Commission for England and Wales. Exempt charities are largely institutions of furth ...

under English law. In the 1980s, local politics in Liverpool was under the control of the Militant group of the Labour Party. In 1986, Liverpool's Militant councillors discussed closing down the city's museums and selling off their contents, in particular their art collections. To prevent this from happening the Conservative government nationalised all of Liverpool's museums under the ''Merseyside Museums and Galleries Order 1986'' which created a new national trustee body ''National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside''.Suzanne MacLeod, ''Museum Architecture: A New Biography'', p31. It changed its name to National Museums Liverpool in 2003. 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 seven days a week 361 days a year and all exhibitions are free. 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 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 ...

, located in

Port Sunlight Port Sunlight is a model village and suburb in the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral, Merseyside. It is located between Lower Bebington and New Ferry, on the Wirral Peninsula. Port Sunlight was built by Lever Brothers to accommodate workers in it ...

Museums and art galleries

References

External links

National Museums Liverpool website

National Museums Liverpool blog
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1851 establishments in the United Kingdom Museums sponsored by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Musical instrument museums in England Non-departmental public bodies of the United Kingdom government Exempt charities Charities based in Merseyside Organisations based in Liverpool