National Museums Liverpool

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. 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. 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. The Trustees changed its operating title to National Museums Liverpool in 2003 but its legal title remains National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside. The…