National Museums Liverpool is made up of seven venues across the region
11:27, 02 Jan 2026Updated 11:27, 02 Jan 2026
Laura Pye, Director of National Museums Liverpool(Image: Robin Clewley)
National Museums Liverpool is preparing to celebrate a huge milestone this year. Back in 1986, it was decided that the city’s collection of objects and artwork had such scientific and historic value that ownership should be given to the nation in order to protect them. Now, decades later, National Museums Liverpool is set to celebrate 40 years since it was created.
National Museums Liverpool (NML) is made up of seven venues across Merseyside; International Slavery Museum, Lady Lever Art Gallery, Maritime Museum, Museum of Liverpool, Sudley House. Walker Art Gallery, and World Museum.
Director of NML, Laura Pye, came into the role during the highly-successful Terracotta Warriors exhibition at the World Museum in 2018. Since then, she has been responsible for the city’s collection of museums. She told the ECHO: “I think when you come into a big organisation like NML that has so many different sites, and, from my point of view as well, is my home museum service.
“These are the museums I grew up with as a kid and all of that. So I came in just wanting to be able to move the museums on to that next step, whatever that looked like being. The thing about museum directors with organisations like NML, these museums have been here 175 years, they’ve been here a long time, lots of them, and some of them are newer, and you’re only ever going to be a kind of footnote in that history.
China’s First Emperor and the Terracotta Warriors Exhibition at World Museum, Liverpool
“So it is about progress and just moving forward, and I think the big things for me when I came in were about the waterfront, and really moving our waterfront sites on and developing the International Slavery Museum, the Maritime Museum, doing some of the stuff with the outdoor space we’ve got down there.
“But you know, even in 2018, sustainability was the thing, my job is to make sure these museums are here in 150 years time. That’s the job I do. And I’m not going to be here to see that. But decisions I make today will impact that. So it was really just about focusing on the business.”
Laura will still be at the helm as NML enters its 40th year in 2026. The director told the ECHO about what the milestone means for the city.
She said: “It’s an important thing about the museums coming together. They were run independently, some of them, and then they came together and they’ve been run, but being, coming together as National Museums Liverpool, and it’s quite unique in the museum sector.
World Museum (Image: Liverpool Echo)
“We are the only national museum service that is solely based outside of London. We’re the only one that’s been nationalised in living memory in that sense. And we were nationalised because of the quality of that collection. Now, here’s issues with that, if we’re honest, because the reason that Liverpool had such a great collection is because, of course, of Liverpool’s involvement in transatlantic slavery.
“So Liverpool made a huge amount of money off the back of transatlantic slavery, which meant that it was a very wealthy city, which meant that it had merchants and bankers and a whole range of other very wealthy individuals living here who did that classic Victorian thing of touring the world and buying incredible art and collections. In some cases not buying it and bringing it back to the city.
“So it has this really unique collection in the UK that you don’t see anywhere outside of London. It’s a really unique, really broad collection base because of the wealth that was in the city at the time. And it being nationalised in the ’80s was a kind of recognition of that quality of the collection and brought the kind of family together, brought the museum together.
Museum of Liverpool. Photo by Colin Lane(Image: Colin Lane/Liverpool Echo)
“And of course, since then, we’ve opened the Museum of Liverpool. The Maritime Museum was just about to open when we were nationalised. But for us, it’s about celebrating us being together as a family and about us playing off the strengths of one another. And a big thing for us is about reminding the people of Liverpool that all of these museums exist.
“It’s the same staff and it’s the same friendly opportunities. It’s just a different subject matter. So I think that’s one of our big drivers for the 40th. And if we can get people to understand which one’s World Museum and which one’s the Museum of Liverpool, that would also help. Because let’s be honest, we all get that wrong quite often.”
NML has been tight-lipped on what will take place around the 40th anniversary, but Laura told the ECHO she wants to use the milestone as a way of celebrating the people who work tirelessly behind the scenes, including its team of around 650 members of staff, as well as the importance of having a national museums in the city.
She said: “We want to use it as an opportunity to drive income in some way. We want to really showcase and kind of focus on the collection because it’s an incredible collection.
“We want to show the reason why we’re national. There will be a kind of showcase of some of the collection items in different ways, whether that’s digitally or in person, there’ll be different things that we’ll do to showcase the breadth of the collection and then we and the experts behind it.
“We’re looking at three main themes for the 40th so we’re going to be reflecting back on 40 years of NML, being together, where these collections came from, what we’ve achieved in 40 years, what we’ve achieved across the city region.
“Then celebrating is another theme which we are going to celebrate it. There will be we will do some celebratory events that will celebrate 40 years of us being together as a family.
“We’re going to do some stuff around inspiring future generations so we want to do some work with schools that will be linked around the 40th.
“We’ll be doing some stuff around inspiring people, you know, the work we’ll do around profile and staff and things will be about inspiring people to think about us differently and to maybe consider roles with us. So those three themes are going to be really important to us, reflecting, celebrating, and inspiring.”
More information can be found on the National Museums Liverpool website.