Liverpool Art Galleries

For a region that has spent most of its modern history insisting it doesn’t care what the rest of the country thinks of it, Merseyside takes its art surprisingly seriously.

Liverpool alone hosts the UK’s largest contemporary art festival in the Biennial, the only Tate outside London (which, admittedly, is currently in a smaller-than-usual home), and a free Walker Art Gallery that holds Pre-Raphaelite paintings the National Gallery would love to get its hands on.

Add the Lady Lever sitting in the middle of a soap magnate’s model village and the Williamson in Birkenhead and you have a public art offer that very few English regions outside London can match.

What follows covers the public art galleries across the five Merseyside boroughs, focussing on the free national and council-run venues, plus the larger not-for-profit independents.

Commercial dealer galleries operating by appointment, gallery spaces inside hotels or private members’ clubs and pop-up exhibitions have been left out, as have university spaces that aren’t really open to the general public.

Opening hours and exhibition programmes change frequently, so check before you travel.

Liverpool City Centre

Liverpool is the heart of the region’s gallery scene, anchored by the Walker, Tate Liverpool and the Bluecoat.

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Most of the major venues are free, which makes a day spent gallery-hopping in the city centre one of the better-value cultural outings in the country.

Walker Art Gallery

• Location: William Brown Street, Liverpool, L3 8EL
• About: Founded in 1877 and routinely described as one of the finest art galleries in Europe outside London, which is the sort of thing people say about a lot of regional galleries, but in this case it’s pretty much true. World-class Pre-Raphaelite holdings (Rossetti, Millais, Holman Hunt), European Renaissance paintings, masterpieces by Rubens, Poussin, Rembrandt, Turner and Stubbs, Impressionists including Monet and Degas and a strong British twentieth-century collection with Nash, Freud and Lowry. It also hosts the John Moores Painting Prize.
• Services: Permanent collection across 13-plus galleries, temporary exhibitions, a sculpture gallery, the Big Art for Little Artists family space, café and shop.
• Hours: Tuesday to Sunday 10:00-17:00, plus Mondays during school holidays. Closed Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year’s Day.
• Admission: Free, including all special exhibitions. If you only have time for one gallery in Liverpool, this is the one.

Tate Liverpool + RIBA North

• Location: 21 Mann Island, Liverpool, L3 1BP (temporary location)
• About: The Tate’s only outpost in the north of England, showing modern and contemporary art from the Tate Collection plus a strong temporary programme. Currently operating from a smaller pop-up space at RIBA North on Mann Island whilst the main Royal Albert Dock building undergoes a major redevelopment, which has not gone entirely to plan.
• Services: Two small galleries and a family area in the temporary space, plus the usual programme of Lates, talks and learning events. Free Wi-Fi, café and shop next door.
• Hours: Typically Tuesday to Sunday 10:00-17:00 at Mann Island. Check tate.org.uk for current hours, which have shifted around during the temporary residency.
• Admission: Free at the temporary space, but ticketed exhibitions will return when the main building reopens and these incur a fee. The Royal Albert Dock building’s redevelopment is currently scheduled to be structurally complete in 2026, with public reopening targeted for 2027. Mark it in pencil rather than pen.

Bluecoat

• Location: School Lane, Liverpool, L1 3BX
• About: Liverpool’s contemporary arts centre, housed in the city’s oldest surviving building, which dates from 1717 and is Grade I listed. It functions as a working home for artists with a year-round programme of free exhibitions, performances and talks.
• Services: Free gallery spaces, a garden, performance studios, craft and design shops in the wings and a café bistro serving homemade meals. The programme is family-friendly and there is usually something going on.
• Hours: Galleries Tuesday to Saturday 10:00-17:00, Sunday from 11:00. The café is open on the same days. Admission: Free entry to the galleries, but events may be ticketed.

Open Eye Gallery

• Location: 19 Mann Island, Liverpool, L3 1BP
• About: Founded in 1977, this is the only gallery in the North West dedicated to photography and related media. International exhibitions across documentary, art photography and lens-based work, alongside a strong socially engaged programme that co-produces work with communities.
• Services: Two gallery spaces, a photography bookshop and a regular programme of talks and workshops. Hours: Tuesday to Sunday 10:00-17:00, with closures during exhibition changeover.
• Admission: Free.

At open eye gallery in Liverpool this evening for the launch of @thenerve.news. All power to new left-leaning publications ✍️📰🗞️

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— Mike Pinnington ✍️ (@doublenegativem.bsky.social) 20:56 · Sep 30, 2025

FACT

• Location: 88 Wood Street, Liverpool, L1 4DQ
• About: A world-leading centre for art, film and the creative use of technology. Three contemporary art galleries plus four Picturehouse cinema screens under one roof. The programme leans heavily into AI, immersive media and digital culture, which is either exciting or alarming depending on your mood that day. Services: Three galleries with around four exhibitions per year, Picturehouse cinema with separate tickets, café and bar.
• Hours: Galleries Tuesday to Sunday 11:00-18:00, closed Mondays. The cinema runs longer hours. Admission: Free for most exhibitions. Cinema tickets are sold separately.

dot-art Gallery

• Location: 14 Queen Avenue, Castle Street, Liverpool, L2 4TX
• About: An independent social enterprise gallery tucked inside the Grade II-listed Queen Avenue arcade. It specialises in affordable original work by Merseyside-based artists and runs a member-artist model where profits go back into supporting local artists and arts education.
• Services: Regularly changing member exhibitions, a framing service, fine-art printing, art classes, an open access dark room and affordable artists’ studios.
• Hours: Tuesday to Saturday 10:00-18:00.
• Admission: Free, with works for sale.

The Wirral

The Wirral’s two big public galleries sit on opposite sides of the peninsula.

There’s a free National Museums Liverpool gallery in the Port Sunlight model village and the borough’s flagship municipal art gallery and museum in Birkenhead.

Lady Lever Art Gallery

• Location: Lower Road, Port Sunlight, Wirral, CH62 5EQ
• About: Built by Lord Leverhulme as a memorial to his wife and opened in 1922 in the heart of his model village. The collection reflects Leverhulme’s personal taste, which was good, boasting exceptional Pre-Raphaelite paintings by Millais, Rossetti and Burne-Jones, works by Leighton, Turner, Constable, Gainsborough and Reynolds, world-class British sculpture, eighteenth-century furniture, Chinese porcelain, and the finest collection of Wedgwood jasper ware anywhere in the world.
• Services: Permanent collection laid out across grand neo-classical galleries, regular temporary exhibitions, a sculpture hall, café and shop.
• Hours: Daily 10:00-17:00. Closed Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year’s Day.
• Admission: Free. Pair the visit with a wander round the village itself and the Port Sunlight Museum (see the Museums directory) and you have a properly satisfying half-day.

Williamson Art Gallery & Museum

• Location: Slatey Road, Birkenhead, Wirral, CH43 4UE
• About: Wirral’s principal council-run gallery. Strong holdings in English watercolours, Victorian art, marine and shipbuilding paintings linked to Cammell Laird, plus the UK’s largest public collection of Della Robbia pottery, which was made in Birkenhead between 1894 and 1906. It regularly hosts touring exhibitions and the Wirral Open Exhibition.
• Services: Permanent and changing displays, ceramics galleries, maritime art rooms, a learning programme and a café.
• Hours: Monday to Thursday 10:00-17:00, Friday 10:00-21:00, Saturday 10:00-17:00. Last entry 30 minutes before closing.
• Admission: Free.

Sefton

Sefton’s gallery offer is concentrated in Southport, where The Atkinson combines an art gallery, museum, theatre and library in a single landmark building on Lord Street.

It is the kind of venue most boroughs would kill for.

The Atkinson (Galleries)

• Location: Lord Street, Southport, PR8 1DB
• About: Holds an art collection of more than 3,500 works, including British nineteenth and twentieth-century painting, Victorian sculpture and contemporary work. The two main galleries rotate temporary exhibitions, often touring shows from major collections, with a smaller community space alongside. The same building also houses Sefton’s Egyptology and local-history museum (see the Museums directory).
• Services: Permanent art collection on rotation, temporary exhibitions, the long-running ‘Story So Far’ display, performances and events, café and shop.
• Hours: Monday to Saturday 10:00-16:00. Sunday 11:00-16:00 during school holidays only.
• Admission: Free, but admission to the galleries and events is ticketed separately.

Knowsley

Knowsley’s public gallery is on the upper floor of The Kirkby Centre and is run by the same council team as Prescot Museum.

The programme is more ambitious than the modest size of the venue might suggest, with regular Arts Council Collection loans bringing serious work to the borough.

Kirkby Gallery

• Location: The Kirkby Centre, Norwich Way, Kirkby, Knowsley, L32 8XY (first floor)
• About: A contemporary art gallery delivering a broad exhibition programme drawn from the Arts Council Collection, Hayward Touring, the National Trust and regional partners. It also hosts the annual Knowsley Open Art Exhibition and partners on Liverpool Biennial and other pan-Merseyside projects.
• Services: Touring and curated exhibitions, schools and community programmes, art courses and family activities.
• Hours: Monday to Friday 10:00-17:00, Saturday 10:00-13:00. Closed Sundays and bank holidays.
• Admission: Free.

St Helens

St Helens doesn’t currently have a dedicated council-run public art gallery, but contemporary glass art is shown across the town and particularly at The World of Glass.

The closest regular gallery spaces for St Helens residents are Kirkby Gallery in Knowsley and the Williamson in Birkenhead, both of which are easy enough to reach.

The World of Glass (Glass Gallery)

• Location: Chalon Way East, St Helens, WA10 1BX
• About: Although primarily a museum, The World of Glass also functions as the town’s main public exhibition space for contemporary studio glass and craft. The gift gallery sells limited-edition pieces by visiting glass artists and the on-site hot-shop runs live glass-blowing demonstrations that double as a kind of rolling exhibition.
• Services: Glass-art display, hot-shop demonstrations, gift gallery, café.
• Hours: Monday to Saturday 10:00-17:00 (November to February half-term 10:00-16:00). Closed Sundays and bank holiday Mondays.
• Admission: Museum and gallery free. The live glass-blowing display is £5 for adults and £3.50 for children and it’s likely to be the bit that you’ve come for.