Qualla: Victoria Gallery & Museum

Victoria Gallery & Museum: Introduction

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Antonio da Correggio, Public domain. Other universities have redbricks. The Victoria Building on Brownlow Hill, completed in 1892 to designs by the prolific Victorian architect Alfred Waterhouse, is the redbrick - the building that gave the entire generation of provincial English universities the nickname they still go by. Waterhouse, the same architect who shaped the Natural History Museum in London and Manchester Town Hall, built this place out of pressed Ruabon brick and Burmantofts terracotta in muscular Romanesque arches, with a clock tower that has loomed over Liverpool's university quarter for more than 130 years. After an 8.6-million-pound restoration, the Victoria Gallery and Museum opened inside it on 28 May 2008 - a Grade II listed building given a second life as a free public museum.

Image: Antonio da Correggio | Public domain

Victoria Gallery & Museum: Audubon Under the Arches

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Joseph Wright of Derby, Public domain. The first floor is given over to the University of Liverpool's art collection - a teaching collection built by donation, bequest, and the accumulated taste of a university across a century and a half. Joseph Wright of Derby's portrait of Liverpool merchant Charles Goore stares ou...

Image: Joseph Wright of Derby | Public domain

Victoria Gallery & Museum: Lightbulb Moments

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Arthur Hacker, Public domain. The top floor is the Tate Hall Museum, named for the Liverpool sugar merchant Henry Tate (yes, the same Tate that funded the London gallery) who endowed teaching space here in the original building. The current exhibition is called Lightbulb Moments and is an unusual experiment: ...

Image: Arthur Hacker | Public domain

Victoria Gallery & Museum: The Original Redbrick

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Caroline Emily Gray Hill, Public domain. Waterhouse's building was originally University College Liverpool - one of three institutions (with Manchester and Leeds) that made up the federated Victoria University of Manchester. The name still resonates here. "THE ORIGINAL REDBRICK," the museum's homepage announces, claimin...

Image: Caroline Emily Gray Hill | Public domain