As National Museums Liverpool celebrates 40 years, the ECHO spoke to one of its longest-serving members of staff
16:59, 01 Apr 2026Updated 16:59, 01 Apr 2026
Pauline Rushton (Head of the Lady Lever Art Gallery & Sudley House) with the Cream jacket she picked for the National Museums Liverpool 40th Anniversary Exhibition
“I very first joined National Museums Liverpool, before it was National Museums Liverpool,” says Pauline Rushton. Pauline, 64, originally from Knotty Ash knew she wanted to work at a museum from the age of 11. She went to university and later worked as a museum volunteer until December 1984. Pauline then got a job as a trainee curator.
Three years later, the Merseyside Museums and Galleries Order was presented to Queen Elizabeth II, creating National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside. The act brought together seven local museums and galleries, creating England’s only national museum group outside London.
While National Museums Liverpool (NML) has welcomed 80m visitors through its doors since 1986, Pauline has worked behind the scenes on some of the museums’ many exhibitions. She is currently head of Lady Lever Art Gallery and Sudley House located in Port Sunlight and Aigburth respectively, but she still remembers her first day.
Pauline told the ECHO: “I remember the sense of walking down the front steps afterwards to go home and thinking, ‘oh my God, that’s amazing, I’ve got to work there’, and I did.
“People think, ‘why would you stay for 40 years?’ Well, a number of reasons. One is it’s gone in the blink of an eye because it’s been so involving in many, many ways.
“The collections are amazing, it is a great place to work and the colleagues that I work with are wonderful as well. There was development opportunity as well, so you could eventually move up the line. It took time obviously, because people stay in the jobs in this field for a long time.
Pauline Rushton, senior curator at National Museums Liverpool arranges hats as part of An English Lady’s Wardrobe exhibition on Friday, October 18, 2019. Peter Byrne/PA Wire
“But I stayed because it’s such a fabulous place to work.”
Pauline has worked on “dozens and dozens” of exhibitions across National Museums Liverpool’s seven museums and galleries, but one that sticks in her mind is the recent Art of the Terraces exhibition in 2022 to 2023 at the Walker Art Gallery. With a particular interest in fashion and popular culture, the exhibition was something Pauline had wanted to do “for years and years”.
She said: “It was a look at a subculture that had never been covered before. The football ‘casuals’ movement came out of Liverpool anda I was observing it in the 80s. I remember thinking back then, watching the guys involved with it, this would be a great exhibition some day.”
Although there are hundreds of objects in NML’s collections, Pauline was able to select one that is among her favourites. As part of its 40th anniversary celebrations, NML is hosting an exhibition to bring together key objects in its collections that share the city’s story.
Curators and staff at the museums were able to pick their favourite objects to go display. Pauline chose a Cream bomber jacket from 1999, which she collected while working as a fashion curator for the museums.
Cream bomber jacket on display(Image: National Museums Liverpool)
She said: “I went along to [Cream’s] shop on Slater Street, where they sold the merchandise. I was about to buy it and said where I was from, and the person said ‘we’ll give you it for free’. They gave me some t-shirts and a few other things.
“The reason I wanted it for the collection is because Cream was so important to Liverpool. It’s about living for the weekend isn’t it? It’s about the dance music scene that came out of rave from the late ’80s. That was also massive in Liverpool.
“The other thing is that I noticed that in the prospectuses of the universities at the time, they were including Cream in there. They were saying come study in Liverpool because we’ve got Cream. It was drawing people on coaches from all over the country.”
Asked if she could sum up her four decades at National Museums Liverpool, Pauline said “it has just been amazing”. She added: “It’s a job I’ve always enjoyed getting up for work every morning.
“I’ve always thought ‘great, ‘what’s on today?’ because every day is different. I’ve always told my two kids that as well, I’ve said money’s not everything. You don’t earn massive mega bucks, but if you can get a job where you’re always glad to get up in the morning you’ve won.”
More information on the National Museum at 40 exhibition can be found here.